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PUBLISHED   BY 

HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


A  GARDEN  ROSARY. 

THE  HOUSE  OF  FRIENDSHIP. 

OUR  COMMON   ROAD. 

CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD.     Illustrated. 


CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 


CAPE   COD 

New  tS'O/d 

AGNES  EDWARDS 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY 

LOUIS   H.  RUYL 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YOaK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
Cbe 


4 


^ 


CAPE   COD 

New  (Sold 

BY 

AGNES  EDWARDS 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS 

BY 

LOUIS  H.  RUYL 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Wat  Slibersibe  |@re«<  Canrtnrftae 


COPYRIGHT,   I918,   BY   AGNES  EDWARDS  PRATT 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  May  iqj8 


•  •••:•••      »•       ••• 
•••••••  1    -•  «        •••••, 


To  him  whose  feet  have  so  often  tramped 
the  Cape  Cod  moors  and  beaches:  whose 
hands  have  wrought  beauty  in  many  of 
her  neglected  places;  and  whose  spirit 
has  become  one  with  the  sunshine  and 
simplicity  of  this  wide  horizon  — 

TO  MY  FATHER 

JOHN  JAY  ELMENDORF  ROTHERY 

this  book  is  affectionately 
dedicated 


^  lo 


m: 


CONTENTS 


The  Lost  Road:  A  Foreword      .      .      .  xi 

I.  The  Cape  Cod  Canal 1 

II.  Bourne  and  the  Cape  Cod  Canal     .       .  4 

III.  Sandwich  —  The  Oldest  Cape  Town      .  22 

IV.  Barnstable  —  The  County  Seat     .       .  39 
V.  Yarmouth  and  Cape  Cod  Methodism     .  59 

VI.  New  Industries  and  Old  in  Dennis        .  72 

VII.  Brewster  and  Cape  Cod  Architecture  .  88 

VIII.  Orleans 101 

IX.  Eastham  and  the  Agricultural  Future 

OF  THE  Cape 116 

X.  Wellfleet  and  Cape  Fishing      .      .       .  126 

XI.  Truro      .      .      . 139 

XII.  Provincetown 149 

XIII.  Chatham  and  the  Life-saving  Service  .  170 

XIV.  Harwich  and  the  Cape  Cod  Schools       .  187 
XV.  Falmouth  the  Prosperous    ....  198 

XVI.  By  a  Cape  Cod  Pond 216 

XVII.  A  Forgotten  Corner  of  Cape  Cod  .       .  226 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Provincetown  from  Town  Hill     .      .  Frontispiece 

An  Old  Windmill  at  Cataumet     .       .       .       .  xi 

The  Crossways,  Cataumet xvi 

The  New  York  Boat  in  the  Canal    ...  1 

A  Brewster  Clipper 3 

Richard  Bourne  teaching  the  Indians     .       .  4 

The  Author's  Home  at  Cataumet,  with  Old 

Mill,,  facing 4 

The  Tupper  House  in  Sandwich    ....  2^ 

The  Old  Church  in  Sandwich, /acm^         .       .  36 

An  Old  Cape  Cod  House 38 

Cape  Cod  Types:  Indian,  Puritan,  Portuguese, 

Finn,  Summer  Resident         .....  39 

The  Barnstable  Marshes, /ocm^    ....  56 

Seafaring  Men 59 

Yarmouth's  Main  Street, /acmgr     ....  60 

Dennis  Bird-Houses 72. 

Cranberry-Pickers, /actwgr 84 

Salt-Works  at  Dennis 87 

An  Old  Fireplace 88 

A  Brewster  Doorway, /acmgr 90 

A  Cape  Cod  Stagecoach 101 


X  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Duck-shooting, /acinar 106 

Early  Camp-Meeting    .      .      .      .      .      .      .116 

Agriculture, /ociVigr 116 

Celery-growing 125 

Building  a  Whaling-Ship 126 

The  Wellfleet  Man  is  First  of  All  a  Seaman, 

facing 126 

Leaving  Provincetown 138 

Grand  View  Farm,  Truro 139 

On  the  Truro  Highway, /acinar       .       .       .       .  140 
Provincetown  Sand-Dunes 149 

The  Pilgrim  Memorial  Monument  at  Province- 
town,  facing 152 

The  Twin  Lights  of  Chatham        .      .       .       .170 

The  Life-S  a  vers, /aczw^ 182 

An  Old  Salt      .........  186 

A  Cape  Cod  School 187 

A  Street  in  Harwich, /acm^ 192 

Through  Pine- Wood  Roads 197 

Shiverick  Pond,  Falmouth 198 

Village  Green,  Falmouth, /acmgr   .       .       .       .198 

An  Old-fashioned  Garden 215 

A  Cape  Cod  Pond 216 

Mashpee  Indians 226 

Canaumet  Neck,  Mashpee        .... 


THE  LOST  ROAD 


A  FOREWORD 

IT  was  not  so  very  long  ago  —  only  ten  or 
fifteen  years  —  that  every  spring  and  fall 
witnessed  a  picturesque  and  fragmentary 
pageant,  winding  its  leisurely  way  along  the 
sandy  road  from  Boston  to  Cape  Cod.  First 
there  would  come  a  couple  of  well-bred  horses, 
driven  either  by  a  gentleman  who  continually 
and  impatiently  shook  the  thickly  settling 
dust  from  his  cloak,  or  by  an  imperturbable 
groom  in  livery.   Behind  these  there  would  be 


xii  THE  LOST  ROAD 

another  horse,  or  may  be  two,  being  led  from 
the  back  seat.  Possibly  there  would  be  another 
carriage  attached  to  the  first.  This  entourage 
was  being  engineered  to  or  from  one  of  those 
charming  summer  places  on  Cape  Cod  which 
—  more  rare  then  than  they  are  to-day  be- 
cause of  their  inaccessibility  —  had  something 
of  the  air  of  feudal  estates.  It  was  quite  neces- 
sary to  bring  your  own  tea  and  tacks  and  cut 
sugar  and  glue  in  those  days,  for  the  village 
stores  furnished  no  such  luxuries  and  few  ne- 
cessities. Now  the  mail  comes  three  times 
daily,  and  the  automobile  has  brought  the 
summer  cottage  within  a  few  easy  hours  of 
Boston.  To-day,  on  Saturday  afternoons,  the 
well-oiled  highway  is  alive  with  glancing  cars, 
and  on  the  great  drawbridge  over  the  canal 
at  Buzzard's  Bay  on  holidays  two  traffic  police- 
men are  kept  busy  from  dawn  to  dusk. 

We  will  not  say  that  the  modern  way  is  not 
as  good  or  even  better  than  the  old  way;  that 
the  thermos  bottle  does  not  fulfill  its  mission 
as  acceptably  as  did  the  chafing-dish,  which 
we  were  wont  to  set  up  in  a  meadow,  and  make 


THE  LOST  ROAD  xiii 

our  tea  upon;  or  that  the  frequent  garage  does 
not  prove  as  friendly  as  did  the  rambhng  livery 
stable  where  the  gentleman  used  to  stop  at 
midday,  and  see  that  the  horses  were  properly 
rubbed  down,  fed  and  watered,  before  the 
twenty-mile  drive  in  the  afternoon.  But  the 
old  way  was  a  charming  way,  and  we  who  knew 
it  well  recall  it  with  affectionate  memories. 
Memories  that,  like  ribbons  at  a  children's 
party,  if  followed  to  their  proper  conclu- 
sion, reveal  a  sugar  plum  at  the  end.  Mem- 
ories of  a  little  town  in  which  we  once  found 
ourselves  quite  as  inexplicably  as  in  the  town 
in  a  dream  —  although,  perhaps,  the  devious 
turnings  of  the  unmarked  roads  were  respon- 
sible for  our  straying.  Here  a  river  ran  one 
side  of  the  village  street;  white  cottages, 
hedged  by  lilacs,  dotted  the  other.  Children, 
shy-eyed  and  wondering,  gazed  at  us,  and  the 
old  ladies,  like  the  decent  country  dames  in  a 
rural  English  shire,  looked  soberly  forth.  We 
stopped  and  asked  for  a  drink  of  water,  and 
while  we  were  drinking,  peeked  surreptitiously 
at  the  thrifty  little  house,  with  its  well-kept 


xiv  THE  LOST  ROAD 

bits  of  ancient  furniture — fain  to  linger  longer; 
but  ashamed  of  the  obviousness  of  our  excuse. 
At  last,  reluctantly,  we  drove  away,  and  never 
again,  in  our  subsequent  searchings,  did  we 
ever  find  that  village  on  any  trip,  either  to  or 
from  the  Cape.  Perhaps  when  the  sign-boards 
were  put  up  at  the  crossways,  directing  trav- 
elers "To  All  Points  on  the  Cape,"  the  minia- 
ture hamlet  saw  its  opportunity  of  withdraw- 
ing into  its  idyllic  seclusion.  Memories,  too, 
of  large  old  mansions,  which  originally  stood 
near  the  sea,  and  from  whose  carved  and  fan- 
lighted  doors  sea  captains  issued  grandly  forth. 
But  when  we  discovered  them,  we  found  a 
desolate  marsh  where  once  the  sea  had  been, 
and  in  the  dim,  echoing  house  only  a  few  de- 
caying relics  of  the  past.  You  might  occasion- 
ally purchase  genuine  antiques,  a  decade  ago, 
if  you  were  not  too  proud  to  carry  them  away, 
secured  with  a  hitching-rope  to  the  back  of 
your  wagon.  Memories  of  picnics  in  apple 
orchards  where  the  drowsy  silence  was  un- 
broken by  any  shriek  of  the  passing  motor  .  .  . 
When  I  close  my  eyes  in  reminiscence  of  those 


THE  LOST  ROAD  xv 

semi-annual  journeys  to  the  Cape,  I  seem  to 
feel  again  the  gentle  jog  of  the  yellow-wheeled 
dogcart,  in  which  Joe  Jefferson  of  fragrant 
memory  on  the  Cape  had  driven  many  miles, 
and  which  followed,  quaintly  enough,  on  the 
heels  of  our  old  gray  mare.  Automobiles  were 
becoming  more  frequent  then,  and  many  of 
them,  as  they  whizzed  by,  paused  to  smile  at 
our  gypsy  paraphernalia,  packed  naively  on 
behind  our  open  cart.  The  blue  eyes  and 
peachblow  face  of  my  sunny-haired  friend  be- 
side me  probably  did  not  detract  in  the  least 
from  the  picture  we  presented.  Who  has  time, 
to-day,  to  notice  whether  the  tourists  to  the 
Cape  are  blue-eyed  or  brown,  or  whether  it  is 
a  coffee-pot  or  an  automobile  kit  that  is  slung 
on  behind? 

The  old  road  to  the  Cape  is  lost  —  and  with 
it  much  of  the  dust,  both  of  reality  and  ro- 
mance. But  a  new  road  has  opened,  bring- 
ing every  year  hundreds  and  hundreds  of 
automobiles;  and  literally  thousands  of  men 
and  women  who  would  otherwise  never  breathe 
the  balmy  air  or  see  those  windswept  moors. 


XVI 


THE  LOST  ROAD 


Surely,  we  old  Cape-Codders  must  and  do 
greet  them  all  hospitably.  It  is  for  their  special 
welcoming  that  this  little  book  is  written.  And 
if,  perhaps,  it  is  touched  too  fondly  by  the 
spirit  of  reminiscence,  that  fault  may  be  for- 
given by  the  newcomers,  and  may  endear  it 
more  to  those  who  are  not  strangers  to  Cape 
Cod. 


CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 


J  J    »       «  » 


■'.■rMff"::-'-',w?-m\ 


l^^m^ 


T 


CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Chapter  I 
THE  CAPE  COD  CANAL 

O  a  stranger,  strolling  in  the  evening  along 
the  pleasant  Bournedale  Valley,  the  hour 
of  nine  is  heralded  by  a  spectacular  phe- 
nomenon. From  far  down  the  narrow  strip 
of  water,  which  is  called  the  Cape  Cod  Canal, 
but  which  seems,  from  this  secluded  spot,  as 
quiet  as  a  country  brook,  there  flashes  a 
piercing,  boring,  burrowing  shaft  of  light:  a 
terrifically  powerful  incandescence  —  spring- 
ing from  an  unseen  source,  and  cleaving  a 
dazzling  path  for  miles  ahead.  Then,  as  if 
awakened  from  "  the  first  sweet  sleep  of 
night"  by  the  unnatural  sunrise,  there  vibrates 
the  roar  of  a  foghorn,  which,  in  turn,  arouses 


^^^^>^XA1^E/€0D  NEW  AND  OLD 

echoes  far  and  near.  On  the  bridge  at  Buz- 
zard's Bay  bells  ring  and  ring,  and  ring  again; 
red  lights  appear;  the  two  mighty  jaws  of  the 
drawbridge  slowly  rise  and  stand  open,  darkly 
silhouetted  against  the  sky.  People  gather  at 
the  crossroads ;  automobiles,  halted  by  the 
lifting  of  the  bridge,  rapidly  form  a  string  of 
twinkling  beads  upon  the  incline.  And  then, 
slowly,  irresistibly,  majestically,  the  New 
York  boat  —  gleaming  white  and  hung  with 
lights  like  a  fairy  ship  —  appears.  It  is  strange 
to  see  this  floating  palace  coming  through  the 
Cape  Cod  meadows;  strange  to  hear,  as  if  at 
our  very  doorsteps,  the  laughter  and  scatter- 
ing voices  of  people  that  crowd  the  open  decks. 
And  strangest  of  all,  to  be,  for  one  brief  instant, 
sucked  into  the  orbit  of  that  great  searchlight, 
which,  like  the  peering  eye  of  some  monstrous 
Cyclops,  flings  its  penetrating  ray  here  — 
there  —  up  —  down  —  illuminating  as  in  a 
blazing  noon  the  shyest  path  and  the  tiniest 
cottage  that  comes  within  its  ray. 

As  the  boat  steams  between  the  lifted  sec- 
tions of  the  bridge,  voices  on  the  shore  call  out 


THE  CAPE  COD  CANAL  3 

greetings,  and  voices  from  the  boat  respond. 
For  a  moment  there  is  that  curious  inter- 
change of  human  intimacy  that  may  only  pass 
between  strangers. 

The  boat  steams  on  and  out.  The  jaws 
descend  and  clamp  together,  the  bells  cease 
ringing,  the  automobiles  speed  across  the 
bridge,  and  the  idlers  disperse  along  the 
country  road.  The  New  York  boat  has 
passed. 


Chapter  II 

BOURNE  AND  THE  CAPE  COD  CANAL 

THE  town  of  Bourne,  from  which  the 
famous  canal  starts,  marks  the  geographi- 
cal beginning  of  Cape  Cod.  Strangers  in  this 
part  of  the  country  are  frequently  puzzled  by 
the  colloquial  use  of  the  word  "  town,"  for 
each  Cape  town  —  of  which  there  are  fifteen 

—  usually  contains  half  a  dozen  or  even  a 
dozen  small  hamlets  within  its  confines,  each 
one  with  its  separate  name,  post-oflice,  railway 
station,  and  distinctive  personality.  These 
smaller  settlements  might  very  easily  be  called 
"  towns,"  but  the  local  way  is  prettier:  they 
are  "  neighborhoods."  Major-General  Leonard 
Wood  was  born  in  Pocasset;  the  yellow  house 

—  square  and  vine-clad,  on  its  wide  lawn  — ■ 


.^^i-'-'^i^. 


^  '44. 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL         5 

stands  at  the  crossroads.  And  Pocasset  is  a 
neighborhood  in  the  town  of  Bourne.  So  ako 
Buzzard's  Bay  —  from  which  the  canal  ac- 
tually starts  —  is  a  neighborhood  in  the  town 
of  Bourne. 

The  name  of  Buzzard's  Bay  is  perhaps  bet- 
ter known  than  that  of  the  mother  district. 
Buzzard's  Bay  is  a  railroad  center  and  a  sum- 
mer resort.  It  is  at  this  point  that  the  first 
Cape  coolness  strikes  through  the  train, 
rumbling  down  from  Boston  laden  with  sum- 
mer folk  and  heat;  it  is  from  here  that  cars 
connect  for  Provincetown  and  Chatham,  and 
to  and  from  Wood's  Hole;  it  is  here  that 
Joseph  Jefferson  and  Grover  Cleveland  had 
their  summer  homes,  —  Crow's  Nest  and 
Gray  Gables,  —  as  well  as  a  score  of  other 
eminent  men  before  and  since.  But  in  spite  of 
its  prominence.  Buzzard's  Bay  is  only  a  small 
portion  of  Bourne,  which  existed  before  there 
was  any  Joseph  Jefferson,  or  any  railroad  to 
the  Cape,  or  any  canal. 

As  you  glance  out  from  your  car  window,  or 
from   your   flying   automobile,   even   if   you 


6  CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

alight  and  look  around,  you  may  not  find 
here,  at  first,  anything  that  seems  particularly 
unique.  There  are  characteristic  Cape  Cod 
houses,  of  course,  —  gray  or  white,  shingled  or 
clapboarded,  a  few  with  porches,  but  most  of 
them  without,  a  story  and  a  half  high,  with  the 
beauty  of  simplicity  and  the  lure  of  modest 
content.  The  extraordinarily  good  roads  that 
criss-cross  here  are  part  of  the  network  that 
threads  the  whole  Cape  and  makes  it  possible 
to  spin  from  one  end  to  the  other  as  smoothly 
and  cleanly  as  on  a  magic  carpet.  There  are 
telephones,  a  public  library,  and  high  school 
and  town  hall  —  all  the  paraphernalia  of  a 
modern  and  comfortable  Cape  town.  For 
Cape  Cod  is  very  prosperous  these  days:  her 
hard  struggle  wresting  a  living  from  the  sea  is 
over.  Now  she  gets  her  bread  and  butter  from 
her  cranberry  bogs,  and  more  and  more  fre- 
quently a  goodly  coating  of  jam  from  the  per- 
quisites from  the  summer  people.  Of  course  it 
is  the  canal  that  gives  Bourne  her  present  emi- 
nence, but  the  present  is  built  upon  a  past 
both  honorable  and  charming.    So  before  we 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL         7 

investigate  the  canal,  it  might  be  well  to  stroll 
down  the  quiet  streets,  and  hear  something 
of  those  far-off  days  when  Jonathan  Bourne, 
for  whom  the  town  was  most  felicitously 
named,  gathered  under  the  mantle  of  his 
preaching  all  the  Indians  from  Middleboro  to 
Province  town. 

This  good  man  was  a  friend  of  Eliot,  and 
taught  almost  one  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  red 
men  to  read  the  Eliot  Bible.  He  began  his 
labors  in  1658,  and  thirty  years  later  the  num- 
ber of  praying  Indians  —  praying  under  his 
tutelage  in  twenty-two  different  places  on  the 
Cape  —  had  reached  a  thousand  and  fourteen, 
including  six  hundred  warriors.  One  likes  to 
read  of  his  patient  and  loving  labors  among 
these  aborigines  who  had  received  —  and 
were  about  to  receive  —  anything  but  loving 
treatment  from  the  hands  of  their  white 
brothers.  One  likes  to  remember  that  the 
town  was  named  after  him,  and  that  his  de- 
scendants still  live  in  it.  There  is  a  story  that 
several  years  after  his  death  a  child  of  his  was 
stricken  by  a  mortal  disease  and  given  up  by 


8         CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  doctors.  But  the  faithful  Indians,  who 
cherished  a  reverent  and  faithful  memory  for 
the  pastor  of  their  souls,  came  from  miles 
around  with  their  medicine  men,  and,  begging 
the  mother's  permission,  treated  the  child  with 
wizardry  and  incantation  and  herbs  and 
simples,  working  hour  after  hour  with  zealous 
fanaticism.  The  story  is  concluded  —  and  we 
have  no  reason  to  doubt  it  —  that  the  child 
recovered.  And,  after  all,  there  have  been 
stranger  revelations  of  faith  and  its  healing 
fruit. 

The  good  Jonathan  Bourne  finally  went  to 
live  with  the  Indians  at  Mashpee,  and  died 
there  —  after  a  long  and  singularly  exalted 
life.  The  serious  chronicle  comes  down  to  us 
with  a  few  amusing  irrelevancies.  We  hear 
that  at  one  time  Bourne  hired  an  Indian  to 
build  a  stone  wall  around  a  portion  of  his  land, 
promising  him  a  barrel  of  rum  when  it  was 
finished.  It  was  no  meager  estate,  for  legend 
has  it  that  he  had  been  presented  by  the  In- 
dians with  all  the  land  he  could  blaze  between 
sunup  and  sundown  —  which  made  him  the 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL         9 

owner  of  the  large  area  which  bears  his  name 
and  which  extended  from  Falmouth  to  Ware- 
ham  and  infringed  a  trifle  on  both.  However, 
the  Indian,  spurred  on  by  the  waiting  reward, 
worked  with  a  vengeance  —  and  worked  for 
years.  But  when  he  got  within  a  few  hundred 
yards  of  the  end,  he  fell  dead,  and  so  he  never 
got  his  drink,  after  all.  The  stone  wall  still 
runs  through  the  woods,  and  although  it  no 
longer  bounds  anything,  it  is  in  a  fair  state  of 
preservation. 

The  whole  history  of  Bourne  is  associated 
with  this  family.  Ruins  of  the  original  home- 
stead may  still  be  seen  near  the  banks  of  the 
canal,  and  from  the  private  graveyard,  not  so 
very  long  ago,  a  thigh  bone  was  dug  up,  twenty- 
seven  inches  long,  the  last  earthly  reminder  of 
some  eight-footer.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  en- 
tire digging  of  the  canal  was  complicated  by 
old  legends  and  curious  fragments  of  the  past. 
At  the  curve  near  Bournedale  there  was  a 
tradition  of  a  slave  buried  with  a  barrel  of 
money,  and  with  the  assurance  that  if  his 
bones  were  disturbed  the  offender  would  be 


10       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

cursed.  The  money  did  not  materialize  during 
the  excavation;  but  the  curse  did.  It  is  a  curi- 
ous fact  that  practically  all  the  difficulties  in- 
cident to  the  building  of  the  canal,  and  all  the 
accidents  in  it  since  then,  have  occurred  at  this 
very  spot. 

Ever  since  the  earliest  days  there  has  been 
speculation  concerning  such  a  waterway  as 
has  at  last  been  achieved.  The  reason  is  ob- 
vious. The  Cape  stretches  out  to  sea,  sixty- 
five  miles  on  the  north  shore  and  eighty  on  the 
south.  The  hook  at  Provincetown  has  caught 
thousands  of  unwary  and  unfortunate  ves- 
sels :  during  the  last  sixty-five  years  alone  more 
than  two  thousand  vessels  were  wrecked  in  the 
waters  of  the  Cape  and  seven  hundred  lives 
lost.  It  was  evident  that  a  canal  would  not 
only  minimize  the  danger  of  that  terrifically 
rough  route,  but  would  shorten  it  immensely. 
Many  places  through  which  to  cut  such  a  wa- 
terway have  seemed  tempting,  but  the  line  be- 
tween Buzzard's  Bay  and  Barnstable  Bay  was 
through  an  alluvial  deposit  only  eight  miles  in 
width,  with  a  surface  elevation  of  twenty-nine 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL       11 

feet  above  tidewater  —  which  points  finally 
won  for  it  its  selection.  The  Pilgrims,  educated 
to  the  convenience  of  canals  by  their  sojourn 
in  the  Low  Countries,  had  vainly  tried  to  com- 
plete one  across  the  Cape.  The  old  charts  of 
the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  indi- 
cate the  possible  routes  they  considered.  Later 
the  High  Court  of  the  Colony  ordered  an  ex- 
amination and  survey.  Then  George  Wash- 
ington decreed  that "  the  interior  barrier  should 
be  cut  in  order  to  give  greater  security  to  navi- 
gation and  against  the  enemy."  Later  the 
canal  project  was  vigorously  agitated  by  Gen- 
eral Knox,  Secretary  Gallatin,  Winthrop,  and 
Thorndike.  In  1860  the  Legislature  of  Massa- 
chusetts published  an  exhaustive  report  set- 
ting forth  the  feasibility  of  such  an  undertak- 
ing. The  agitation  was  incessant  and  fruitless : 
it  was  not  until  1909  that  anything  was  actu- 
ally done.  Then  Mr.  August  Belmont,  who  was 
born  on  the  Cape  and  has  always  had  an  affec- 
tion for  the  place,  conferred  with  Mr.  William 
Barclay  Parsons,  who  had  been  a  member  of 
the  Panama  Canal  Commission  and  had  also 


U        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

constructed  the  New  York  Subway,  and  three 
years  later,  with  flags  and  floats  and  bells  and 
lights,  the  canal  was  opened. 

The  casual  traveler  who  pauses  upon  the 
drawbridge  at  Buzzard's  Bay  or  at  Sagamore, 
and  gazes  up  and  down  the  peacefully  curving 
stream,  seeing  the  little  vessels  slide  under  his 
feet,  while  the  great  jaws  of  the  bridge  open  for 
the  passage  of  the  taller  ones,  has  hardly  more 
conception  of  the  value  of  this  waterway  than 
might  an  Indian,  returning  from  his  happy 
hunting-grounds  after  three  hundred  years, 
and  standing  awe-stricken  as  the  vast  "  white- 
winged  birds,"  as  he  called  all  ships,  float 
through  his  level  pasture  land  down  to  the 
great  ocean. 

Most  tourists  are  amazed  to  learn  that  the 
canal  —  following  the  line  of  Bournedale  Val- 
ley —  is  thirteen  miles  long,  and  that  on  each 
side  runs  a  flawless  automobile  road;  that  it  is 
a  hundred  feet  wide  at  the  bottom  and  three 
hundred  at  the  top;  that  it  saves  seventy  miles 
of  the  distance  between  New  York  and  Bos- 
ton.  That  is  probably  as  far  as  they  care  to 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL        13 

follow  the  statistics.  It  means  little  to  them 
to  be  told  that  this  is  the  only  large  canal  —  ex- 
cept those  of  Suez  and  Manchester  —  which 
has  been  built  by  private  enterprise  (incident- 
ally, the  majority  of  the  Suez  Canal  stock  is 
now  owned  by  the  British  Government  and 
that  of  the  Manchester  Canal  by  the  city  of 
Manchester);  or  that  it  cost  twelve  million 
dollars;  or  that  while  it  is  not  deep  enough  for 
warships  of  the  battleship  class,  it  could  be 
made  deep  enough,  and  that  it  is  pledged  to 
surrender  itself  for  Government  use  in  time  of 
war;  or  that  twenty-five  thousand  vessels, 
carrying  approximately  twenty-five  million 
tons  of  freight,  used  to  pass  around  the  Cape 
through  Vineyard  Sound  —  a  tonnage  equal  to 
that  of  the  Suez  Canal.  While  it  is  not  possible 
even  yet  to  estimate  the  precise  tonnage  pass- 
ing through  the  Cape  Cod  Canal,  and  while  the 
great  boom  of  prosperity  which  it  promised  to 
bring  has  come  more  slowly  than  was  expected; 
nevertheless,  this  canal  ranks  with  one  of  the 
most  important  in  the  world,  and  if  it  had 
been  cut  through  sooner  might  have  gained  a 


14        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

marine  supremacy  equal  to  that  of  the  Hudson 
River. 

The  work  was  first  undertaken  with  suction 
dredges,  but  great  boulders,  some  of  them 
weighing  twenty  tons,  barred  the  way.  The 
natives  recalled  the  old  legend  about  the  Devil, 
who  came  down  the  Cape  one  fine  day  step- 
ping from  one  hill  to  another  to  keep  from  get- 
ting his  feet  wet.  His  apron  was  full  of  bould- 
ers, and  as  he  entered  the  town  of  Bourne  a 
chickadee  laughed  at  him.  In  a  rage  he  seized 
a  boulder  from  his  apron  and  started  to  throw 
it  at  the  bird.  But  he  stumbled  and  fell,  and  the 
boulders  landed  in  Bournedale  and  are  pointed 
out  from  one  generation  of  children  to  the  other 
as  the  place  where  the  Devil  broke  his  apron 
strings.  However  that  may  be,  the  huge 
boulders  were  there  when  the  suction  dredges 
were  installed,  and  shovels  and  locomotives 
were  set  to  tugging  at  them,  —  mammoth 
dental  instruments  against  a  colossal  mouth, 
—  each  one  bringing  up  twenty  thousand  tons 
of  earth  a  day,  or  as  much  in  every  scoop  as 
could  be  shoveled  by  one  man  working  ten 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL       15 

hours.  The  material  was  dumped  upon  scows 
and  deposited  in  deep  water.  Two  machine 
shops  had  to  be  set  up,  —  one  at  each  end  of 
the  canal,  —  as  the  work  necessitated  con- 
stant repairs  and  the  making  of  new  imple- 
ments. Two  dikes,  something  like  the  Gam- 
boa  at  Panama,  were  built,  and  the  central  part 
of  the  canal  was  dug  with  steam  shovels.  Elec- 
trically driven  pumps  kept  the  water  down 
when  the  men  were  working  below  tide.  When 
the  work  was  completed  the  dikes  were  dy- 
namited, and  the  two  bays  brought  together. 
The  canal  is  a  sea-level  one,  and  is  constructed 
without  a  tidal  lock,  the  necessity  for  one  be- 
ing obviated  by  the  three  hours'  difference  in 
time  between  the  periods  of  slack  water  on  the 
two  sides  of  the  Cape. 

It  is  easy  to  see  for  one's  self  any  of  the  most 
interesting  features  of  the  canal.  The  three 
drawbridges  —  one  at  Buzzard's  Bay,  one  at 
Bourne,  and  one  at  Sagamore  —  open  spec- 
tacularly in  a  prodigious  yawn  at  the  passing 
through  of  all  tall  vessels.  The  double  line 
of  lights  curve  with  the  curve  of  the  canal, 


16        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

making  a  sort  of  brilliant  Broadway  across  the 
quiet  landscape.  There  is  a  complete  tele- 
phone and  telegraph  system;  a  transatlantic 
cable;  and  signals  to  blow  and  sparkle  in  time 
of  fog  and  when  the  bridges  are  lifted.  These 
precautions  are  not  too  many,  for  the  ghastly 
accident  of  a  few  winters  ago  is  still  vivid  in 
many  minds.  It  was  during  a  blinding  snow- 
storm, and  an  automobile  was  on  the  draw- 
bridge when  it  opened.  Imagine  the  horror  of 
the  occupants  when  they  felt  rising  under 
them  a  sheer  vertical  wall,  as  impossible  to 
scale  as  the  side  of  a  house,  and  saw  gaping  be- 
hind them  a  deadly  chasm,  between  the  shore 
end  of  the  draw  and  the  bridge.  For  only  a 
moment  could  the  brakes  hold  to  that  per- 
pendicular surface.  To  jump  was  immediate 
death;  to  stay  was  to  defer  the  end  only  a  few 
seconds.  Slowly  at  first  and  then  with  terrific 
speed  the  auto  slid  backward  down  the  incline, 
reached  the  opening  and  crashed  through  the 
darkness  to  the  black  rocks  and  rushing  water 
forty  feet  below  .  .  . 

Down  toward  Sandwich  one  can  see  the  mas- 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL        17 

sive  breakwater,  three  thousand  feet  long,  and 
containing  three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
tons  of  granite.  At  the  Buzzard's  Bay  end  the 
passage  out  has  been  deepened  for  five  miles, 
in  the  same  fashion  as  the  Panama  Bay  on  the 
Pacific  side  of  the  Isthmus. 

As  the  franchise  gave  the  Canal  Company 
the  right  to  buy  or  condemn  property  if  neces- 
sary, in  order  that  it  might  have  a  canal  zone 
of  one  thousand  feet  at  each  end,  and  six  hun- 
dred feet  through  the  central  part,  this  even- 
tually resulted  in  several  lawsuits.  In  one  of 
these.  Gray  Gables,  the  home  of  former  Presi- 
dent Cleveland,  was  involved.  The  canal  also 
divided  several  villages  —  in  Bournedale  the 
railroad  station  is  on  one  side,  and  the  vil- 
lage is  on  the  other,  and  one  must  cross  by 
means  of  a  ferry.  A  relocation  of  several  miles 
of  railroad  was  necessary,  to  which  the  rail- 
road officials  showed  no  objection,  realizing 
that  whatever  cheapens  water  communication 
benefits  the  mills,  and  that  products  of  the 
mills  will  be  shipped  over  the  railway.  And 
mills  and  factories  are  confidently  expected 


18        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

to  line  the  banks  of  the  canal  at  some  future 
date. 

We  who  idly  stand  watching  the  trafiic  of 
the  world  pass  along  this  little  stream  of  water, 
or  who  come  up  in  automobiles  to  see  the  New 
York  boat  pass  through,  have  almost  forgot- 
ten —  if  we  ever  heard  of  it  —  the  first  trad- 
ing-station made  upon  this  spot.  On  the  south 
bank  of  the  Manomet  River,  —  the  Indian 
name  has  been  changed  to  Monument  by  care- 
less use,  —  halfway  between  Gray  Gables  and 
where  the  railway  station  was  built  in  1880,  the 
Pilgrims  placed  a  trading-post  in  1627.  Here 
it  was  that  on  September  2  of  that  year  Miles 
Standish  sailed  up  from  the  Scusset  River  to 
meet  the  sloops  of  the  merchant  De  Rasieres, 
who  had  been  sent  out  by  New  Amsterdam  to 
answer  the  starvation  call  of  the  English  pio- 
neers. Here  a  trading-post  —  or  pinnance  — 
was  established,  where  the  colonists  exchanged 
sugar  and  linen  stuffs  and  other  goods  with  the 
Dutch  of  New  Amsterdam  and  the  colonists 
of  Virginia.  There  was  no  settlement  there: 
only  a  rude  station,  as  the  forerunner  of  the 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL       19 

communication  that  now  flows  so  easily  along 
the  whole  Atlantic  Coast. 

There  is  another  tale  to  be  told  about  Bourne 
and  the  Manomet  River;  perhaps  the  most 
strange,  surely  the  saddest,  of  all.  It  was  in 
1756  that  a  company  of  people,  speaking 
French,  appeared  here  in  seven  two-masted 
boats.  They  landed,  and  came  wearily  ashore, 
explaining,  as  best  they  could  in  their  broken 
patois,  that  they  wished  to  have  their  vessels 
and  their  women  and  children  carted  across 
the  land  to  the  opposite  bay.  One  can  pic- 
ture them,  gathered  in  a  wistful  group  on  the 
sands,  the  men  with  stocking  caps  and  the 
women  with  white  kerchiefs  on  their  heads, 
while  the  children,  like  and  unlike  the  sober 
little  Puritans  who  wondered  at  them,  held 
tightly  to  a  paternal  hand  or  maternal  petti- 
coat. 

These  ninety  souls  were  the  last  remnant 
of  the  seven  thousand  Acadians  who  had  been 
driven  from  the  exquisite  Annapolis  Valley  by 
the  British,  and,  after  a  heart-breaking  period 
of  exile,  were  now  making  one  despairing  bold 


W       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

rush  for  home  again,  snatching  at  any  hand 
to  help  them. 

There  is  extant  a  letter  from  Silas  Bourne 
to  Colonel  Otis  concerning  them,  which  says: 
"  They  profess  to  be  bound  for  Boston  and  want 
their  boats  carted  across  to  the  opposite  bay. 
They  have  their  women  and  their  children 
with  them,  and  they  say  were  last  from  Rhode 
Island,  but  previously  from  Nova  Scotia.  I 
fear  they  may  continue,  when  once  in  the 
ocean,  to  miss  Boston,  and  think  it  safe,  there- 
fore, to  detain  them." 

Thus  it  was  that  the  pitiful  little  band  — 
Papists  and  strangers  in  a  strange  land  — 
were  distributed  in  lots  among  the  various 
towns  for  *'safe  keeping" — not  to  mention 
regeneration.  In  due  time  the  court  ordered 
their  boats  sold.  It  is  safe  to  presume  that  none 
of  these  pathetic  wayfarers  ever  reached  home, 
or  came  in  touch  again  with  any  of  their  own 
kin,  who  were  also  in  "safe  keeping"  in  other 
coast  towns.  Not  a  trace  of  them  remains  on 
Cape  Cod:  not  a  name  on  a  hill  or  path.  There 
are  no  descendants  to  preserve  even  the  faint- 


BOURNE  AND  THE  CANAL       21 

est  tradition  of  the  past.  The  whole  band 
seems  to  have  been  completely  obliterated  — 
swallowed  up  forever  by  the  congregation  of 
*'the  Lord's  people."  It  was  in  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  however,  that  a 
great  storm  shifted  the  sands  near  Scusset 
Neck  and  revealed  traces  of  what  might  have 
once  been  a  French  settlement.  Here  it  was, 
in  all  probability,  that  the  unfortunate  Acad- 
ians  had  gathered;  near  the  harbor  where  they 
could  look  out  over  the  wide  waste  of  water 
that  separated  them  from  all  that  they  held 
dear  —  from  Grand  Pre  and  the  noble  river. 
A  pathetic  folk,  doomed  to  live  and  finally  to 
die,  among  a  hostile  people:  foreigners,  igno- 
rant of  the  language  about  them;  Romanists 
without  a  priest  —  their  homesickness  and 
despair  are  better  told  by  Longfellow  in  his  sad 
and  gentle  story  of  "Evangeline."  But  we, 
to-day,  untangling  the  strong,  plain  threads 
that  made  up  the  warp  and  woof  of  simple 
Puritan  life  in  Bourne,  pause  a  moment  as  our 
fingers  touch  this  solitary  silken  strand  —  so 
rudely  broken,  long  ago. 


Chapter  III 


SANDWICH— THE  OLDEST  CAPE  TOWN 

SANDWICH,  Yarmouth,  and  Barnstable 
all  date  their  incorporation  from  1639,  but 
Sandwich  stubbornly  insists  that  she  is  the 
oldest  of  the  three.  And  she  is  right. 

Although,  as  explained  in  the  previous  chap- 
ter, there  had  been  a  trading-post  established 
on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Manomet  River 
in  1627,  yet  there  was  no  English  settlement 
on  the  Cape  until  April  3,  1637,  when  ten  men 
from  Saugus  were  magnanimously  given  per- 
mission by  the  court  at  Plymouth  to  "have 
the  liberty  to  view  a  place  to  sit  down  in,  and 
have  sufficient  land  for  threescore  families." 
It  is  rather  amusing  to  hear  of  liberty  to  "sit 


SANDWICH  23 

down "  granted  to  a  people  who,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  their  history,  have  shown  anything 
but  a  desire  to  "sit  down,"  but  rather  a  most 
determined  disposition  to  range  from  pole  to 
pole,  either  by  sea  or  land.  However,  these 
ten  men, — perhaps  glad  to  "get  up"  from 
Plymouth,  —  after  hunting  around  a  little 
while,  selected  a  place  of  residence,  and 
named  it  Sandwich,  after  a  seaport  in  Kent. 

The  names  of  these  ten  men  are  noteworthy, 
not  only  because  of  the  distinction  of  the  orig- 
inal bearers,  but  because  of  the  perpetuation 
of  them  in  Cape  Cod  records  ever  since.  They 
were  Edmund  Freeman,  Henry  Feake,  Thomas 
Dexter,  Edward  Dillingham,  William  Wood, 
John  Carman,  Richard  Chadwell,  William 
Almy,  Thomas  Tupper,  and  George  Knott. 
Sir  Charles  Tupper,  the  last  of  the  fathers  of 
the  Canadian  Confederacy,  who  died  in  Lon- 
don in  1916,  was  a  direct  descendant  of  this 
"man  from  Saugus." 

Soon  after  the  settlement  was  begun,  the 
ever-vigilant  Plymouth  Colony  sent  two  com- 
missioners   to    Sandwich    to    set    forth    the 


24        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

"bounds  of  the  land  granted  there."  They 
were  commanded  to  go  "with  all  convenient 
speed,"  which  probably  averaged  about  three 
miles  an  hour;  and  it  quickens  school-day 
memories  to  know  that  their  names  were  Miles 
Standish  and  John  Alden.  They  evidently  did 
their  duty  according  to  directions,  for  the  lit- 
tle town  immediately  entered  upon  a  thor- 
oughly regular  and  decorous  career:  so  deco- 
rous, indeed,  that  it  fared  ill  with  any  but  the 
strictest,  as  the  records  of  two  hapless  bachelors 
who  had  innocently  undertaken  to  "sit down" 
shows.  They  had  no  families,  and  although 
they  were  diligently  laboring  to  clear  the 
ground  for  future  uses,  they  were  promptly 
arraigned  in  Plymouth  for  "disorderly  keep- 
ing house  alone,"  which  throws  another  light 
upon  the  desirability  of  winning  a  Priscilla  in 
those  days. 

Church  was  established;  laws  rigidly  en- 
forced; meadow-land  which  had  previously 
been  laid  out  was  again  "divided  by  equal 
proportion,  according  to  every  man's  estate"; 
a  common  for  the  pasturage  of  young  cattle 


SANDWICH  25 

was  decided  upon.  And  then,  having  safely 
found  a  secure  and  pleasant  place  which  they 
could  call  their  own,  and  in  which  they  could 
enjoy  the  pleasure  of  individual  freedom  more 
easily  than  at  Plymouth,  they  unanimously 
decreed  that  ''no  other  inhabitants  would  be 
received  into  the  town,  or  have  lands  assigned 
to  them  by  the  committee,  without  the  con- 
sent of  Mr.  Leverich  [the  minister]  and  the 
church  "  —  SL  complacent  narrowness  entirely 
characteristic  of  the  early  records  of  our  fore- 
fathers. 

Sandwich  —  that  village  which  lies  so 
dreamily  around  its  willow-shaded  pool,  with 
the  peaceful  graveyard  basking  in  the  sun, 
one  of  the  sweetest  of  all  the  Cape  towns,  es- 
pecially to  those  who  know  the  way  of  ap- 
proach through  the  woods,  and  to  whom  the 
sylvan  clearing  blooms  forth  in  ever  lovely, 
ever  fresh  surprise  —  was  a  stern  place  in 
those  early  days.  The  winters  were  severe. 
The  settler  had  to  modify  his  English  ideas 
of  agriculture,  and  to  feed  his  cattle  on  the 
wild  grass  of  the  salt  marshes.    He  lived  in 


26        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

a  thatched  hut,  and  worked  from  morning 
till  night.  He  fought  blackbirds,  crows,  and 
pigeons  in  swarms.  He  raved  against  the 
wolves  and  they  raved  back  at  him,  until  the 
last  one  was  shot  by  a  teamster  from  his  load 
of  wood  in  1839.  ^ 

Before  there  was  a  gristmill  in  Sandwich, 
men  either  had  to  walk  to  Plymouth  and  back 
with  a  grist  of  corn  on  their  shoulders,  or  to 
follow  the  Indian  fashion  of  pounding  corn  in 
a  mortar.  There  was  no  sawmill  nearer  than 
Scituate. 

As  though  they  did  not  have  trouble  enough 
with  the  elements  and  the  inevitable  difficul- 
ties of  pioneers,  as  soon  as  these  intrepid  first 
settlers  had  subdued  their  surroundings  enough 
to  enable  them  to  draw  breath,  they  turned 
themselves  to  an  energetic  campaign  against 
the  Quakers. 

1  At  one  time  Sandwich,  in  despair  about  these  fierce  ma- 
rauders, proposed  a  paUsade  fence,  ten  feet  high,  to  run  from 
Buzzard's  Bay  to  Massachusetts  Bay,  so  as  to  keep  out  the 
wolves.  Objections  were  made  quite  strenuously  by  the  peo- 
ple on  the  other  side  of  the  fence,  who,  with  good  show  of 
reason,  did  not  relish  the  idea  of  being  deliberately  penned 
up  with  the  brutes,  even  for  the  sake  of  accommodating  their 
neighbors. 


SANDWICH  27 

Cape  Cod  has  been  entirely  free  from  the 
witchcraft  mania  which  swept  the  North 
Shore,  but  her  behavior  toward  the  Quakers 
fills  a  page  as  shocking  as  any  hangings  on 
Gallows  Hill  in  Salem.  There  was  more  trouble 
in  Sandwich  than  in  the  other  towns  of  Barn- 
stable County,  not  necessarily  because  there 
was  more  bitterness,  but  because  there  were 
more  Quakers.  The  persecution  began  in  1657 
and  lasted  for  four  years,  until  Charles  the 
Second  put  an  end  to  it.  The  laws  were  exces- 
sively cruel  and  were  cruelly  enforced.  En- 
tertaining a  Quaker  —  even  for  a  quarter  of 
an  hour  —  cost  five  pounds,  the  year's  pay  of 
a  laboring  man.  If  any  one  saw  a  Quaker  and 
did  not  inform  the  constable,  —  even  if  he  had 
to  go  six  miles  for  the  purpose,  —  he  was  pun- 
ishable at  the  discretion  of  the  court.  For 
allowing  preaching  in  one's  own  house,  the  fine 
was  forty  shillings:  in  addition  the  preacher 
was  fined  forty  shillings,  and  each  auditor 
forty  shillings,  although  no  one  of  them  might 
have  spoken  a  word.  The  Quakers  were  fined 
for  every  Sunday  that  they  went  to  their  own 


28       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

meeting-house,  and  for  every  Sunday  that 
they  did  not  go  to  that  of  the  Puritans.  In 
three  years,  besides  other  punishment,  there 
were  taken  from  them  cattle,  horses,  and  sheep 
to  the  value  of  seven  hundred  pounds.  The 
fines  of  William  Allen  alone  amounted  to  eighty- 
seven  pounds.  In  addition  to  this,  they  were 
flogged,  banished,  and  had  their  ears  cut  off. 

And  yet  the  people  of  Sandwich  insisted 
then  —  and  maintain  to  this  day  —  that  they 
personally  had  no  animosity  toward  this  per- 
secuted sect,  but  were  forced  to  these  extreme 
measures  by  the  Plymouth  Colony.  The  facts, 
indeed,  seem  to  substantiate  this  claim.  There 
are  many  records  of  a  Quaker  having  to  be 
sent  to  a  neighboring  town  for  punishment, 
local  feeling  running  so  high  against  such  treat- 
ment in  Sandwich.  Ultimately  so  many  of  the 
citizens  were  fined  for  expressing  sympathy 
with  Quaker  views  that  the  town  constable 
could  not  perform  his  duties  and  a  special 
marshal  from  Plymouth  was  appointed  to  fill 
his  place !  This  marshal  —  Barlow  —  would 
have  inspired  Dickens  with  material  for  an- 


SANDWICH  29 

other  Squeers  of  Dotheboys  Hall.  When  sent 
to  levy  on  the  goods  of  a  Quaker  he  used  to 
seize  the  article  which  could  be  least  spared,  — 
such  as  the  family  kettle,  —  thus  revealing  a 
malignity  only  equaled  by  its  ingenuity. 

In  order  to  understand  the  vindictive  in- 
tolerance of  the  Puritans  toward  a  people  who, 
all  agreed,  were  inoffensive  enough  in  their 
personal  lives,  one  must  realize  that  a  com- 
munity like  this  was  built  upon  the  belief  that 
the  ministerial  office  was  sacred.  The  church 
organization  was  an  essential  part  of  the  social 
and  ethical  life.  Therefore,  any  people  who 
merely  followed  what  they  called  the  "inward 
light,"  and  who  had  no  consideration  for  paid 
preachers,  believing  that  the  Divine  Revela- 
tion comes  to  all  alike,  were  dangerous,  not 
only  religiously  but  civically.  This,  coupled 
with  the  irritation  we  always  feel  toward  a 
thing  which  we  do  not  quite  understand,  ex- 
plains in  a  measure  the  Puritans'  determina- 
tion to  drive  the  Quakers  out  of  the  colony. 
And  it  accounts,  also,  for  the  difference  be- 
tween this  and  the  witchcraft  mania:  for  while 


30        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  latter  was  due  to  individual  hatred  and 
terror,  the  former  was  based  upon  a  system- 
atic policy  of  government. 

Like  many  apparently  yielding  people,  the 
Quakers  were  tenacious.  Floggings,  ear-crop- 
pings,  and  fines  did  not  discourage  them.  They 
neither  gave  up  their  beliefs  nor  their  habita- 
tions, although  many  of  them  did  leave  Sand- 
wich, for  Falmouth,  where  they  were  kindly 
received,  gently  treated,  and  where  they  have 
a  meeting-house  of  their  own  to  this  day. 

Sandwich,  besides  being  typical  of  this  sec- 
tion of  Massachusetts  in  much  of  its  early  his- 
tory, and  in  much  of  its  characteristic  scenery, 
in  which  woodland,  moor,  pond,  and  ocean 
blend  in  ever-charming,  ever-changing  vistas, 
is  also  typical  in  that  it  was  once  the  seat  of 
manufacturing  as  well  as  maritime  activities. 
The  glass-works,  which  were  established  in 
1825,  were  among  the  then  largest  in  the  world. 
There  are  still,  in  many  Cape  Cod  parlors, 
specimens  of  this  Sandwich  glass :  colored  gob- 
lets, engraved  pitchers,  lamp  globes,  a  sugar 
bowl  made  by  hand  for  a  wedding  gift,  mir- 


SANDWICH  31 

rors,  funny  little  glass  animals  in  their  natural 
colors,  blown  inside  a  glass  bell,  —  a  perpetual 
mystery  to  the  children  who  occasionally  crept 
into  the  sacred  room  to  steal  a  look  at  the 
marvelous  curiosities.  There  are  doors  in  some 
of  the  old  houses  of  the  old  glass-workers  with 
engraved  glass  inset  as  panels,  and  many  a 
humble  cottage  glitters  with  an  array  of  cut- 
glass,  for  which  the  blanks  were  made  at  Sand- 
wich. There  were  flint-glass-works  in  Sand- 
wich, too,  the  most  important  industry  in  the 
county,  and  a  tack  factory  which  was  de- 
stroyed by  fire  in  1883. 

To-day  the  large  manufacturing  plant  which 
one  sees  at  Sagamore,  —  one  of  the  ''neighbor- 
hoods" of  Sandwich,  extending  over  a  mile  in 
length,  and  with  the  usual  accompaniment 
near  by  of  employees'  houses,  —  is  the  largest 
freight-car  plant  in  New  England.  This  Keith 
Car  and  Manufacturing  Company  was  estab- 
lished as  early  as  1864,  when  Sagamore  still 
bore  the  Indian  name  of  Scussett,  and  the 
founder,  Isaac  Keith,  started  the  building  of 
wagons.   Many  of  the  prairie  schooners  which 


32        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

traveled  over  the  Western  desert  in  '49  were 
built  here,  notably  the  one  in  which  Captain 
Sutter  had  sallied  forth  to  find  his  spectacular 
fortune  of  gold.  Now  ten  thousand  freight  cars 
can  be  turned  out  in  one  year  and  shipped  to 
all  parts  of  the  world.  And  with  the  Cape  Cod 
Canal  at  its  door,  the  cars  may  be  shipped  di- 
rectly from  the  plant  and  delivered  to  their 
destination. 

There  is  an  old  wood  road,  barely  visible 
now,  which  runs  straight  from  Sandwich  to 
Falmouth.  No  automobile  could  go  through 
it:  in  fact,  no  automobilist  would  notice  its 
faint  traces.  But  horseback  riders,  and  those 
few  folk  who  love  to  tramp  through  the  Cape 
woods,  know  it  well.  This  is  the  Turpentine 
Road,  down  which  used  to  be  carted  the  tur- 
pentine made  from  the  pines  in  this  region. 
Those  tall  pines  have  fallen  under  the  tongues 
of  flames,  which  have  lapped  the  Cape  so  many 
times,  and  scrub  oaks  have  sprung  up  in  their 
place.  The  turpentine  industry  is  gone,  and 
this  ancient  road,  with  its  three  ruts,  is  fast 
fading  into  eternal  obliteration. 


SANDWICH  33 

It  is  wholly  fitting  that  the  oldest  town  on 
the  Cape  should  boast  the  oldest  house.  If  you 
are  interested  in  antiques  it  will  pay  you  to 
take  the  Canal  Road  on  your  way  from  Saga- 
more to  Sandwich,  and  make  the  little  detour 
that  will  bring  you  to  the  Tupper  house. 

You  will  recognize  it  immediately,  for  its 
sagging  framework  and  small-paned  windows 
betray  its  age  as  clearly  as  do  the  bent  form 
and  dimming  eye  of  an  octogenarian.  It  was 
built  in  1637,  and  is,  without  question,  the 
oldest  house  in  America,  in  spite  of  the  claim 
so  often  made  for  the  old  stone  Van  Rensselaer 
manor  house  near  Albany,  New  York.  It  is 
not  merely  because  its  years  are  many  that  the 
Tupper  house  deserves  a  respectful  survey:  it 
is  because  they  have  been  honorable  as  well. 
When  you  stand  under  the  shadow  of  the 
venerable  door,  your  feet  are  resting  on  the 
very  sill  where  a  hundred  and  thirty-five  years 
after  the  landing  of  Columbus,  Thomas  Tup- 
per stood  when  he  became  a  householder  in 
the  new  little  town  of  Sandwich,  and  where, 
only  this  year,  there  was  picked  up  by  a  work- 


34        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

man  a  coin  marked  1609.  The  seven  genera- 
tions of  Tuppers  who  have  Uved  there  suc- 
cessively for  two  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
years  have  been  prominent  in  the  ministry, 
the  army,  the  navy;  in  medicine  and  peda- 
gogy. Sir  Charles  Tupper,  who  won  for  him- 
self not  only  a  place  in  the  British  peerage,  but 
also  among  the  list  of  Canadian  benefactors, 
was  only  one  of  this  remarkable  family,  scat- 
tered throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of 
the  land,  and  which  has  recently  formed  itself 
into  the  Tupper  Family  Association,  to  restore 
the  old  homestead  and  turn  it  into  a  museum. 
Look  well  at  this  venerable  house.  Note  the 
chimney  —  almost  twelve  feet  square.  Note, 
too,  the  mark  of  the  axe  on  the  timbers  that 
are  exposed,  and  the  good  workmanship  re- 
vealed in  the  corners  and  the  ceilings.  Houses 
like  this  one  were  built  without  studs,  the 
sheathing  being  nailed  perpendicularly  to  the 
framework  of  the  house.  Pick  up  one  of  the 
old  shingles  lying  at  your  feet.  It  was  split  by 
hand  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  fastened  by 
a  hand-inade  nail.  See  how  the  lower,  weather- 


SANDWICH  35 

beaten  half  is  worn  to  half  its  original  thick- 
ness —  and  yet  the  shingle  is  still  good.  To- 
day we  think  a  wooden  shingle  that  will  last 
twenty  years  is  exceptionally  solid,  while  our 
modern  nail  often  rusts  out  in  half  that  time. 
Few  modern  houses,  no  matter  how  costly, 
can  claim  the  beauty  of  fine  workmanship 
which  distinguishes  this  simple  homestead. 

There  are  other  points  of  interest  in  this 
vicinity:  the  Daniel  Webster  Inn,  where  that 
eloquent  statesman  used  to  put  up  when  on 
his  frequent  and  well-loved  fishing  trips  to  the 
Cape,  and  the  grave  of  Joseph  Jefferson,  the 
actor  whose  summer  home,  ''Crow's  Nest," 
was  for  many  years  at  Buzzard's  Bay.  Jef- 
ferson's grave,  in  the  Bayview  Cemetery  by 
the  side  of  the  country  road,  is  marked  by  a 
great  rough  boulder,  with  a  bronze  medallion 
of  his  keen,  kindly  profile  on  one  side,  and  on 
the  other  his  own  words:  ''And  yet  we  are  but 
tenants;  let  us  assure  ourselves  of  this,  and  then 
it  will  not  be  so  hard  to  make  room  for  the  new 
administration,  for  shortly  the  Great  Landlord 
will  give  us  notice  that  our  lease  has  expired." 


36        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

At  Sagamore  Beach,  where  there  is  quite  a 
settlement  of  summer  folk,  is  also  the  summer 
headquarters  of  the  Christian  Endeavor  As- 
sociation, and  a  favorite  place  for  many  con- 
ferences of  a  progressive  nature. 

At  East  Sandwich  the  State  maintains  a  fish 
hatchery  which  is  restocking  many  of  the 
ponds  of  Massachusetts  with  trout,  and  also 
experimenting  with  land-locked  and  Chinook 
salmon.^ 

The  Cape  Cod  Farm  Bureau,  which,  with 
the  assistance  of  the  United  States  Depart- 
ment of  Agriculture  and  the  Agricultural  Col- 
lege, is  endeavoring  to  stimulate  and  instruct 
the  farmers  of  the  Cape,  not  only  in  the  latest 
and  best  methods  of  planting  and  marketing, 
but  in  cooperation,  was  organized  at  Sand- 
wich, and  maintained  there  until  its  recent  re- 
moval to  Hyannis.  In  the  Bureau  there  is  a 
Home  Economics  Department  also;  so,  not 
only  the  men  may  profit  by  the  demonstration 
lectures   in   spraying,   pruning,   milk-testing, 

1  For  a  more  detailed  account  see  the  pages  about  the  Cape 
fisheries,  chap.  x. 


SANDWICH  37 

soil-testing,  compounding  fertilizers,  packing 
and  grading  apples,  etc.,  but  the  boys  and  girls 
are  urged  to  join  garden  and  canning  clubs, 
and  the  women  are  assisted  in  their  special 
problems  of  household  management,  sanita- 
tion, etc.^ 

These  things  you  can  read  about  when  you 
return  home.  But  there  is  one  thing  in  Sand- 
wich which  you  cannot  read  about;  that  you 
must  go  to  see  for  yourself,  or  forever  lose.  Do 
not  leave  Sandwich  without  straying  to  the 
little  graveyard  that  lies  on  the  sloping  hill- 
side, jutting  into  the  lake.  You  will  see  the 
ancient  stones  peacefully  slanting  against  the 
rays  of  the  setting  sun,  bearing  inscriptions 
almost  obliterated  by  the  finger  of  time.  You 
will  see  the  willows  fringing  the  tranquil 
waters,  and  a  spire  that  will  remind  you  of  the 
best  of  Sir  Christopher  Wren's  fine  modeling, 
white  against  the  soft  blue  sky.  You  will  see 
two  dark,  thimble-shaped  linden  trees,  curi- 
ous  accents   against   the   paler   background. 

^  For  a  more  detailed  account  of  the  Agricultural  Awaken- 
ing of  the  Cape,  see  chap.  ix. 


38        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

And  as  you  linger  in  the  quiet  yet  cheerful 
spot  you  will,  perhaps,  see  the  prettiest  of 
white  boats  slip  out  from  a  bridge  that  might 
have  been  copied  from  a  Chinese  plate  and 
slide  across  the  water. 

You  will  see  these  things,  and  then,  if  you 
will  close  your  eyes  and  open  your  spirit,  you 
will  feel  the  peace  that  comes  from  a  place 
ineffably  lovely,  ineffably  serene.  A  place 
which  men  chose  as  beautiful  and  set  aside  as 
sacred  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  where 
for  three  throbbing  centuries  good  men  and 
good  women  have  been  laid  reverently  to  rest. 


Chapter  IV 


BARNSTABLE  — THE  COUNTY  SEAT 

IF  you  should  imagine  a  long  picture  gal- 
lery —  three  centuries  long,  and  as  wide 
as  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  —  hung 
with  American  types,  from  the  Indian  and  the 
Puritan  to  the  twentieth-century  business 
man,  you  would,  if  you  had  a  correct  view  of 
such  a  gallery,  notice  that  not  an  inconsider- 
able portion  of  it  would  be  occupied  by  the 
New  England  type,  in  various  phases  of  its 
development.  And  you  would  be  struck  by 
even  a  more  detailed  classification:  the  Cape 
Cod  type.  Perhaps,  however,  in  order  to  study 
this  specialized  group,  it  would  be  better  to 
transfer  our  imaginations  from  a  national  pic- 
ture gallery  to  a  local  one;  and  what  more  suit- 


40        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

able  place  than  the  gracious  and  sedate  county 
seat  of  Barnstable? 

Barnstable  has  been  the  home  of  many  dis- 
tinguished men:  James  Otis,  Samuel  A.  Otis 
(member  of  Congress  and  father  of  Harrison 
Gray  Otis),  Solicitor-General  Davis,  Samuel 
Shaw,  Mr.  Palfrey  (the  historian).  Governor 
Hinckley,  and  Nymphas  Marston  among 
them.  If  we  step  inside  the  handsome,  gray- 
pillared  court-house,  we  shall  find  here,  in 
looking  over  the  ancient  records  and  the  yel- 
lowing pictures,  portraits  from  which  we  our- 
selves will  evolve  an  imaginative  gallery. 

First  of  all  we  shall  hang  the  portrait  of  the 
Indian;  not  only  because  he  was  the  first  in- 
habitant of  this  region,  but  because  he  still 
persists  upon  it.  You  may  see  him  any  day  — 
not  in  pure-blooded  impressiveness,  to  be  sure, 
yet  with  the  straight  black  hair,  the  erect  car- 
riage, and  the  numberless  small  traits  which 
characterize  the  people  of  Mashpee.^ 

Next  we  shall  hang  the  pioneer:  of  pure  Eng- 
lish  descent,   of   high   order   of   intelligence; 

1  See  chap,  xvii,  "A  Forgotten  Corner  of  Cape  Cod." 


BARNSTABLE  41 

grave,  severe,  upright.  Perhaps  we  may  be 
forgiven  if  we  now  put  two  smaller  pictures 
close  to  this  one;  for,  after  all,  the  Puritan  was 
not  the  only  man  who  came  to  the  new  colo- 
nies. Looking  back  to  those  early  days  we  are 
very  apt  to  forget  that  there  were  along  with 
the  band  of  sterner  personages  a  number  of 
wits  and  scamps  and  wags,  seeking  adventure 
rather  than  religion,  and  freedom  from  re- 
sponsibility rather  than  assumption  of  it. 
After  the  Revolution  the  reaction  against  the 
Puritans  encouraged  more  and  more  recruits 
to  this  jolly  crew.  They  had  big  Saxon  hearts; 
they  tasted  wine  with  Yorick  at  the  tavern, 
and  afterward  went  their  way  to  Yorick's  fate 
in  the  graveyard.  As  they  did  not  write  the 
records,  we  learn  of  them  chiefly  between  the 
fading  lines  of  fines  and  trials.  They  were 
never  stanch  upholders  of  the  Church,  in  an 
age  when  not  to  be  so  was  a  decided  disgrace. 
Stalwart  and  rollicking,  they  infuse  a  certain 
ruddy  tang  into  the  austere  color  of  those 
early  days.  Let  us  give  them  some  remem- 
brance in  our  gallery. 


42       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

And  beside  them  a  small  portrait,  but  a 
definite  one  —  the  high-bred  eccentric,  sent 
over  to  the  colonies  by  some  distracted  family, 
glad  to  find  an  asylum  for  a  peculiar  member. 
"Characters"  they  were  often  called,  and  their 
successors  still  flavor  many  a  New  England 
village. 

Another  portrait,  too  frequently  neglected 
by  the  historians,  must  hang  in  this  line:  a 
dark  face,  laughing  and  yet  sorrowful,  —  the 
face  of  the  negro.  The  people  of  Massachusetts 
have  liked  to  believe  that  slavery  had  a  very 
light  and  very  brief  hold  upon  this  soil.  Rec- 
ords, however,  testify  all  too  distinctly  that 
our  Puritan  fathers,  doubtless  considering 
themselves  the  elect  to  whom  God  had  given 
the  heathen  for  an  inheritance,  not  only  en- 
slaved captured  Indians,  but  sold  them  to 
work  in  the  tropics,  where  they  died  almost 
immediately;  that  they  obtained  negroes  by 
importation,  purchase,  and  exchange;  that 
they  condemned  criminals  into  slavery  as 
punishment;  and  that  they  even  enslaved  the 
Quakers  at  one  time.  Neither  was  this  a  priv- 


BARNSTABLE  43 

ate  speculation,  but  an  enterprise  of  the  au- 
thorities of  the  colony,  and  existed  for  over  a 
century  and  a  half  without  serious  challenge. 
Cotton  Mather  illustrates  the  temper  of  the 
times  toward  the  Indians  in  his  "Magnalia," 
in  which  he  explains:  "We  know  not  when  or 
how  these  Indians  first  became  inhabitants  of 
this  mighty  continent,  yet  we  may  guess  that 
probably  the  Devil  decoyed  these  miserable 
savages  hither,  in  hope  that  the  gospel  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ  would  never  come  to  de- 
stroy or  disturb  his  absolute  Empire  over 
them." 

In  the  will  of  John  Bacon,  of  Barnstable, 
made  in  1730,  we  get  another  inimitable  speci- 
men of  the  inconsistency  then  current.  This 
John  Bacon  gives  to  his  wife  the  ''use  and  im- 
provement" of  the  slave  Dinah  for  her  life- 
time, and  if  "at  the  death  of  my  said  wife, 
Dinah  be  still  living,  I  direct  my  executors  to 
sell  her,  and  to  use  and  improve  the  money  for 
which  she  is  sold  in  the  purchase  of  Bibles,  and 
distribute  them  equally  among  my  said  wife's 
and  my  grandchildren." 


44        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

About  1780  slavery  became  unprofitable 
and  therefore  unpopular  in  this  climate,  but  it 
was  not  until  President  Lincoln's  Proclama- 
tion that  it  was  entirely  abolished  —  a  fact 
which  it  would  be  salutary  for  many  a  too 
emphatic  New  England  abolitionist  to  remem- 
ber. 

Before  we  leave  this  era  let  us  place  one 
more  vivid  and  forever  romantic  picture 
against  the  wall :  it  is  of  a  young  woman,  seated 
upon  a  scarlet  blanket  upon  a  snow-white  bull. 
Before  her  walks  the  newly  made  bridegroom, 
for  this  is  a  bridal  procession,  and  John  Alden 
is  leading  his  wife  —  she  who  was  Priscilla 
Mullen  of  Barnstable  —  back  to  the  Plymouth 
Colony;  surely  a  picturesque  flash  in  the  som- 
ber annals  of  that  early  history. 

If  we  pass  over  two  hundred  years  we  shall 
recognize  anew  many  of  the  qualities  which 
distinguish  the  first  settlers.  The  portraits  we 
place  against  the  wall  are  still  of  those  of  pure 
English  descent.  They  have  married  and  inter- 
married until  nearly  every  one  calls  nearly 
every  one  else  by  his  or  her  first  name.   Uncle 


BARNSTABLE  45 

Simon  and  Aunt  Lizzie  and  Cousin  Abbie  are 
as  frequent  here  as  colonels  in  Kentucky.  They 
are  thrifty,  law-abiding,  Jntelliggit.  Ijheir^ 
humor  is  as  sharp  and  dry  as  the  sand  on 
which  they  live.VThey  are  excellently  well  in- 
formed. And  why  not,  when  every  other 
family  boasts  a  member  who  has  sailed  around 
the  world  and  kept  his  eyes  open  as  he  went, 
bringing  back  more  than  silk  and  fans  and 
coral  from  his  visit  to  distant  shores?  In  1880 
a  case  was  tried  in  Barnstable,  for  which  a 
lawyer  from  a  distance  was  summoned.  Dur- 
ing the  course  of  his  argument  he  implied  that 
probably  none  of  the  jury  knew  of  procedures 
beyond  their  own  dooryards.  Rather  nettled 
by  the  assumption,  some  one  took  the  trouble 
to  inquire  about  that  particular  jury,  and  found 
that  eleven  out  of  the  twelve  had  been  all  over 
the  world,  either  as  masters  of  their  own  ves- 
sels or  in  some  business  capacity.  The  twelfth 
was  a  substantial  farmer.  And  such  an  as- 
sortment of  men  was  by  no  means  an  extra- 
ordinary thing. 

We  do  not  over-estimate  the  intelligence  of 


46       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

these  Cape-Codders.  Practically  every  ener- 
getic man  took  long  sea  voyages,  coming  back 
with  new  ideas  and  broad  opinions.  In  1839 
two  hundred  and  fifty  of  its  citizens  were 
masters  or  mates  of  some  of  the  finest  ships  in 
the  Union.  They  not  only  raised  the  mental 
standard  of  the  community  to  which  they  so 
faithfully  returned  and  to  which  they  brought 
so  generously  of  their  cosmopolitan  collec- 
tions, but  they  were  judges  of  tea  and  silk  and 
coal  and  manufactured  goods.  They  were 
commercial  pioneers:  they  gambled  on  car- 
goes, and  sometimes  made  a  fortune  on  a 
single  voyage.  They  were  the  forerunners  of 
the  Americans  who  have  conceived  the  big 
commercial  ideas  and  carried  them  out;  who 
later  built  railroads  across  the  continent,  and 
laid  telegraph  wires  under  the  sea.  It  was  a 
Cape-Codder  who  sent  a  ship-load  of  babies' 
cradles  around  the  Horn  in  '48  to  California, 
and  sold  them  at  fabulous  prices  to  serve  as 
*' rockers"  for  gold  mines,  just  as  the  first 
fever  of  '49  began.  And  it  was  another  who 
sent  ice  to  the  tropics  where  such  a  thing  had 


BARNSTABLE  47 

never  been  heard  of  and  where  profits  of  one 
thousand  per  cent  were  made.  Besides  their 
inteUigenee,  the  Cape-Codders^^have  always 
been  a  conspicuously  law-abiding  folk.  Thor- 
eau  observed  when  he  passed  through  Barn- 
stable that  the  jail  was  **to  let."  It  might  fre- 
quently have  been  marked  so,  for  it  is  hard  to 
imagine  communities  less  inclined  to  htigation 
and  more  habituated  to  minding  their  own 
business  and  not  interfering  with  their  neigh- 
bors. There  are,  of  course,  opportunities  of 
disputes  concerning  cranberry  flowage  statutes, 
fishing  and  beach  privileges,  etc.  But  not- 
withstanding their  admirable  record  for  valor 
both  on  the  seas  and  in  fighting  the  enemy, 
their  respect  for  order  has  always  prevailed. 

In  spite  of  their  good  behavior  at  home  — 
possibly  because  of  it?  ^  they  were  rovers. 
One  cannot  scour  the  globe  and  hug  one  s 
hearthstone  at  the  same  time.  But  although 
they  sailed  away,  —  and,  when  the  sailing  and 
fishing  interests  declined,  went  away  by  land 
to  seek  fame  and  fortune  and  to  find  it, 
they  never  forgot  the  smell  of  the  salt  marsh  in 


48        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

haying-time,  or  the  cool  of  the  misty  moors; 
the  traiHng  arbutus  in  spring,  or  the  sight  of 
the  "white-winged  birds"  as  the  Indians  love 
to  call  the  sailing  vessels.  Just  as  the  merchant 
from  Detroit  comes  back  to  his  native  birth- 
place at  Hyannis  or  Bourne,  so  his  grand- 
father and  his  great  grandfather  found  their 
way  back  after  their  trips  to  India  and  Ceylon, 
and  settled  down  to  end  their  days  within 
sight  of  the  tranquil  shore. 

This  is  the  Cape-Codder  that  the  historian 
has  delighted  to  honor;  that  the  novelists  have 
eagerly  depicted;  that  the  cartoonists  have 
jocularly  portrayed  with  web  feet  combing  his 
hair  with  a  codfish  bone.  Until  1895  ninety 
per  cent  of  the  population  of  Cape  Cod  was 
native-born  of  pure  English  stock,  maintain- 
ing to  a  remarkable  degree  the  quintessence 
of  New  England  characteristics  with  the  wider 
virtue  of  Americanism. 

But  with  the  influx  of  summer  people  — 
about  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago  —  a  change 
has  crept  through  the  veins  of  the  race.  The 
most  radical  ethnical  change  that  has  occurred 


BARNSTABLE  49 

since  the  beginning  of  her  history  is  in  process, 
and  it  is  coming  about  in  such  a  silent,  incon- 
spicuous way  that  even  those  it  affects  most 
vitally  have  as  yet  hardly  realized  it.  The 
time  has  come  to  hang  another  portrait  on  the 
walls  of  the  picture  gallery :  that  of  a  newcomer 
with  physiognomy  and  complexion  quite  as 
different  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  as  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  from  the  aborigines. 

Would  you  be  surprised  to  know  that,  in  a 
certain  graduating  class  in  a  public  school  in 
the  township  of  Falmouth,  fifty  of  the  children 
were  Portuguese  and  but  ten  were  American? 
Would  you  be  surprised  to  know  that  there 
are  Roman  Catholic  churches  in  Barnstable 
where  only  Portuguese  attend,  and  Protestant 
ones  where  Finns  are  the  only  communicants.^ 
One  sixth  of  the  population  is  foreign  in  the 
town  of  Barnstable;  in  certain  neighborhoods, 
one  half.  What  a  change  from  the  old  days 
when  a  dark-skinned  newcomer  was  a  curios- 
ity! 

With  the  exception  of  Provincetown,  Barn- 
stable has  probably  the  greatest  number  of 


50       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Portuguese  of  any  town  on  the  Cape,  their 
advent  here  being  similar  to  their  advent  in 
many  of  the  small  towns  where  they  have  now 
firmly  established  themselves. 

The  newcomers  are  usually  a  small  group, 
say  half  a  dozen  single  men,  who  appear  in  the 
press  of  the  cranberry  season  when  their  serv- 
ices are  gratefully  accepted.  They  find  ac- 
commodation in  some  old  barn  or  shed,  where 
they  live  peaceably  enough,  the  sound  of  danc- 
ing and  of  a  crude  guitar  on  a  summer  eve- 
ning being  the  only  thing  which  proclaims 
their  presence.  They  buy  milk  from  a  near-by 
farmer  and  are  punctilious  in  their  payments. 
Once  established,  they  proceed  to  make  them- 
selves extremely  useful.  They  pick  strawber- 
ries, blueberries,  cranberries,  and  beach  plums 
in  due  succession.  In  the  winter  they  gather 
shellfish.  And  in  the  spring  they  import  a  wife 
and  children  from  Sao  Miguel  or  from  Lisbon, 
buy  some  abandoned  farmhouse,  and  move 
in.  The  land  that  has  lain  fallow  for  a  decade 
is  coaxed  into  fertility.  Besides  tending  their 
garden  patches  and  their  houses  they  work  all 


BARNSTABLE  51 

day  like  beavers.  The  man  teams,  fishes,  goes 
out  for  "day's  work,"  and  picks  berries.  A 
quick  Portuguese  can  earn  as  much  as  three 
dollars  a  day  in  blueberry  season.  The  wife 
goes  out  scrubbing  or  takes  in  washing.  Every 
single  child  hies  to  the  woods  and  picks  berries 
like  mad  all  summer  and  goes  to  school  all 
winter.  And  presto!  in  half  a  dozen  years  the 
village,  which  was  almost  deserted,  resounds 
to  a  voluble  dialect.  The  school  which  boasted 
ten  pupils  has  twenty-five  —  more  than  half 
of  them  with  unpronounceable,  three-syllable 
names.  Gradually  the  community  which  sur- 
veyed the  intruders  with  resentment  succumbs 
to  force  of  numbers.  The  Portuguese  youth, 
educated  side  by  side  with  the  Yankee  maiden, 
falls  in  love  with  her,  and  marriage  is  the 
sequel. 

It  is  largely  a  matter  of  numbers.  Where 
there  are  few  Portuguese,  as  in  neighborhoods 
in  Bourne,  they  have  no  social  standing.  The 
natives  even  refuse  to  pick  berries  on  the  bogs 
with  them  at  cranberry-time.  But  where  they 
outnumber   the    original    inhabitants,    as    in 


52        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Provincetown,  we  get  the  other  side  of  the 
shield.  They  become  storekeepers;  the  girls 
go  to  normal  school  and  attain  a  teacher's 
diploma,  and  intermarriage  follows  quite  na- 
turally. 

While  the  Portuguese  are  scattered  all  over 
the  Cape,  the  Finns  are  gathered  chiefly  in 
Barnstable.  They  are  a  quiet  and  industrious 
people,  with  a  desire  and  capacity  for  educa- 
tion; and  they  bring  with  them  many  of  the 
admirable  traces  of  their  own  civilization. 
Their  entrance  into  a  village  is  similar  to  that 
of  the  Portuguese,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  they 
will  ever  reach  such  large  numbers.  They  are 
so  intelligent  and  thrifty  that  some  of  the  most 
progressive  farmers  from  other  towns  have 
found  it  worth  their  while  to  import  them  — 
giving  them  house-room  for  the  sake  of  serv- 
ices which  later  they  may  hire  from  them  and 
their  numerous  children. 

Thus,  as  the  sons  and  daughters  of  the  Cape 
have  wandered  inland,  as  their  progenitors 
wandered  seaward,  to  win  fame  and  fortune,  a 
comely  and  a  quiet  race  has  humbly  taken  pos- 


BARNSTABLE  53 

session  of  the  deserted  houses  and  is  patiently 
and  with  infinite  persistence  making  the  Hght 
but  productive  soil  to  blossom  like  the  rose. 
So,  to  the  Portuguese  and  the  Finn  must  surely 
be  granted  the  next  place  in  the  picture  gal- 
lery of  the  Cape. 

The  final  place  in  the  gallery  would  belong 
to  a  group  affording  quite  an  amusing  con- 
trast —  that  of  a  prosperous  business  man, 
his  well-dressed  wife,  and  a  group  of  young 
folks,  children  and  guests,  with  tennis  rackets, 
riding-whips,  and  the  other  insignia  of  sum- 
mer recreation.  For  popular  as  all  the  Cape 
is,  and  permeating  as  are  the  presence  and  in- 
fluence of  the  summer  colonists  throughout  the 
county,  yet  the  spacious  township  of  Barn- 
stable is  especially  favored,  not  so  much  with 
boarding-houses  and  hotels,  but  with  hand- 
some estates  and  substantial  summer  homes  of 
a  large  and  cosmopolitan  population.  Hyan- 
nis,  with  its  fashionable  shops,  where  you  may 
buy  Italian  furniture  or  Brittany  pottery  or 
Japanese  novelties;  Osterville,  Centerville, 
Wianno,  —  about  a  dozen  or  so  progressive 


54        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

villages,  —  are  all  part  of  Barnstable,  and  are 
rich  with  modern  houses,  shaven  lawns,  and 
commodious  garages.  You  may  travel  for 
miles  through  them  along  a  well-oiled  highway 
catching  glimpses  of  well-kept  gardens  and 
hospitable  residences  across  the  white  fences 
or  the  vine-clad  stone  walls. 

Hyannis,  although  technically  a  village  in 
the  town  of  Barnstable,  is  such  a  thriving  place 
that  one  cannot  slip  over  it  with  a  mere  men- 
tion. Its  original  Indian  name  of  lyannough, 
in  honor  of  the  young  sachem  who  first  re- 
ceived the  colonists,  has  passed  through  the 
modifications  of  Janno,  lanno,  Hyanno,  to 
the  present  Hyannis,  which  pleasantly  recalls 
the  Indian  syllables.  With  its  all-the-year- 
round  population  of  4500;  with  its  Board  of 
Trade,  Women's  Club,  Sunday  Evening  Lec- 
tures, and  its  world-famous  Normal  School,^ 
it  is  a  place  of  modernity.  The  headquarters 
of  Barnstable  Council  Boy  Scouts  of  America 
is  at  Hyannis.  The  Boy  Scouts  on  the  Cape 
number  sixteen  troops,  with  an  enrollment  of 

^  See  chap,  xiv,  "Harwich  and  the  Cape  Cod  Schools." 


BARNSTABLE  55 

two  hundred  and  sixteen  boys  and  eighty  men. 
The  headquarters  of  the  Barnstable  Y.M.C.A. 
have  recently  been  removed  from  Sagamore 
to  Hyannis,  and  the  Cape  Cod  Farm  Bureau 
has  made  the  same  change  from  Sandwich.  For 
the  rest,  there  are  summer  hotels,  golf  courses, 
tennis  courts,  moving  pictures  —  quite  an 
amazing  development  for  a  village  which  in 
1850  had  only  nine  letter  boxes  in  its  post- 
office.  One  should  not  leave  Hyannis  without 
a  trip  to  Shoot  Flying  Hill,  five  miles  away, 
from  which,  on  a  clear  day,  one  may  see  all 
Cape  Cod,  and  the  entire  mainland  as  far 
north  as  Plymouth,  stretching  out  in  a  living 
map  at  one's  feet. 

Thus  the  long  picture  gallery  of  Barnstable 
brings  us  up  to  the  present  day.  First  the 
pioneer,  both  the  Puritan  and  the  adventurer; 
then  the  thrifty,  intelligent  "first  inhabitants" 
with  their  sea  captains  and  sailors  and  patriots, 
whose  descendants  live  on  to  this  day  in  the 
old  homesteads;  then  the  voluble  Portuguese 
and  the  industrious  Finns;  and  finally  the 
generous  army  of  summer  folk,  who,  although 


56        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

they  return  in  the  fall  to  distant  cities  from 
Boston  to  St.  Louis,  still  love  to  call  the  Cape 
"home." 

Besides  being  the  center  of  the  racial  melt- 
ing-pot, Barnstable  has  some  fair  sights,  chief 
among  them  being  the  sweep  of  the  marshes  — 
green  in  summer,  russet  in  the  fall  —  from 
which  the  town  received  its  original  name  of 
"Great  Marshes."  The  court-house,  too, 
standing  on  its  dignified  eminence,  is  of  goodly 
proportions,  and  is  the  inspiration  and  reposi- 
tory of  many  legends.  It  was  built  in  1832, 
and  has  been  twice  enlarged.  The  bell  which 
the  first  edifice  —  the  court-house  —  bore  was 
east  in  Munich,  and  bore  the  inscription,  "Si 
Deus  pro  nos,  quis  contra  nos,  1675,"  recalling 
the  tragedy  of  Captain  Peter  Adolphe,  who  had 
been  cast  away  on  the  shore  in  1697  or  '98, 
and  whose  body  was  recovered  and  buried  at 
Sandwich.  His  widow,  in  grateful  remem- 
brance of  the  reverent  rites  accorded  her  hus- 
band, —  who  had  been  a  stranger  in  a  strange 
land,  indeed,  —  presented  the  citizens  with 
the  bell,  which  hung  in  the  tower  of  the  old 


BARNSTABLE  57 

meeting-house  for  thirty  years.  In  1703  it  was 
sold  to  buy  a  larger  one.  Barnstable  County 
purchased  it,  and  it  is  now  preserved  in  the 
office  of  the  clerk  of  the  courts,  where  visitors 
may  admire  its  lovely  shape  and  exquisite 
chasing.  The  court-house  overlooks  the  very 
harbor  where,  in  July,  1621,  a  party  of  men 
from  the  Plymouth  Colony  came  in  a  shallop, 
commanded  by  Miles  Standish,  in  search  of 
a  boy  who  had  been  lost  in  the  woods.  This 
lad  had  fallen  in  with  a  group  of  Indians  who 
had  taken  him  to  Nauset,  now  Eastham.  This 
same  group  of  Indians  conducted  the  searching 
party  to  Eastham  also,  found  the  boy  for  them, 
and  took  a  courteous  farewell.  j 

After  this  Barnstable  was  often  visited  by 
the  Plymouth  colonists  on  their  expeditions 
to  buy  corn,  until  it  was  definitely  settled  in 
1639  on  the  usual  conditions  and  with  the  cus- 
tomary restrictions.  The  church  was  estab- 
lished early,  and  although  no  building  was 
erected,  tradition  points  to  a  place  on  the  high- 
way between  Barnstable  and  West  Barnstable 
where  once  stood  a  huge  rock.  Here,  under  the 


58       CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

shadow  of  the  roadside  oaks  and  pines,  the 
devout  met  and  worshiped  —  more  Uke  Greeks 
in  their  leafy  temples  than  they  probably 
realized. 

It  is  pleasant  to  recall  that  although  Barn- 
stable was  christened  in  memory  of  the  sea- 
port in  Devonshire  near  the  Bristol  Channel, 
yet  the  name  of  the  young  sachem  who  first 
received  the  colonists,  lyannough,  is  still  per- 
petuated in  the  town  of  Hyannis,  an  incident 
that  recalls  that,  after  all,  the  first  portrait  to 
lead  the  picture  gallery  is  that  of  the  red  man, 
who,  before  Pilgrim  or  Portuguese  or  summer 
visitor,  gazed  out  over  the  wind-licked  marshes 
of  the  spacious  town  of  Barnstable  and  called 
them  his  own. 


Chapter  V 


YARMOUTH  AND  CAPE  COD  METHODISM 

YARMOUTH,  named  for  a  seaport  in 
Norfolk,  England,  is  the  elbow  town  of 
the  Cape:  from  here,  Barnstable  County  be- 
gins to  widen  and  the  soil  to  thicken.  And 
here,  too,  we  find  various  phases  of  Cape  his- 
tory sharply  accented. 

Although  Yarmouth  is  the  third  oldest  town 
on  the  Cape,  —  being  incorporated  with  Sand- 
wich and  Barnstable  in  1639,  its  Revolutionary 
history  stirring,  and  the  record  of  its  various 
industries  of  whaling  and  seafaring  most  vigor- 
ous, —  yet  it  is  neither  through  its  civil  nor 
economic  history  that  Yarmouth  has  won  its 


60        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

special  fame.  That  fame  rests  on  its  being  the 
great  camp-meeting  center  of  Cape  Cod.  Here, 
in  the  Millennium  Grove,  every  year  for  a 
week,  men,  women,  and  children*  congregate 
in  a  sort  of  extended  revival  meeting,  getting 
and  giving  fresh  impetus  to  religious  progress, 
and  to  the  progress  of  Methodism  through  all 
New  England. 

It  was  South  Wellfleet  that  held  the  first 
camp  meeting  on  Cape  Cod.  This  was  in  1819, 
and  was  followed  by  religious  revivals  in  Prov- 
incetown  and  Eastham.  In  1826  the  encamp- 
ment was  held  at  Truro,  and  two  years  later 
it  moved  to  Eastham.  It  is  from  this  latter 
place  that  the  history  of  the  Methodist  Epis- 
copal Church  on  Cape  Cod  really  dates,  and 
as  we  see  the  white-spired  churches,  dotting 
the  scattered  hamlets  all  through  Barnstable 
County,  we  cannot  help  but  be  struck  by  the 
significance  of  the  religion  which  ever  since  its 
inception  has  been  unbrokenly  characteristic 
of  this  region. 

The  early  days  at  Eastham  were  marked  by 
fervor  and  discomfort.    One  who  decided  to 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    61 

attend  the  camp  meeting  first  had  to  drive  to 
Barnstable;  from  there  take  a  vessel  to  East- 
ham;  row  from  the  vessel  to  shallow  water;  be 
carted  through  the  shallow  water  by  a  farm 
wagon;  and  then  walk  a  mile  through  the  sand 
to  the  Camp-Meeting  Grounds.  There  were 
no  cottages;  no  tabernacle.  The  seats  were  of 
bare  planks  without  backs,  and  the  preachers 
slept  on  the  floor  —  on  straw  —  in  a  wooden 
shack.  There  was  but  one  well  on  the  grounds, 
and  one  man  was  commissioned  to  do  all  the 
pumping  for  those  who  wanted  water.  In  the 
morning  one  saw  the  reenactment  of  ancient 
Biblical  scenes,  in  the  scores  and  scores  of  per- 
sons, waiting  with  their  bowls  and  pitchers  to 
be  served  with  the  water  that  was  to  last  them 
through  the  day. 

Strenuous  as  this  regime  was,  nevertheless 
the  Camp-Meeting  Ground  at  Eastham  held 
its  own  for  thirty  years.  Then  it  was  moved 
to  Yarmouth,  the  extension  of  the  Old  Colony 
Railroad  down  to  this  point  making  it  an 
accessible  gathering-place.  In  August,  1863, 
the   first   camp   meeting   at   Yarmouth    was 


62        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

held,  and  they  have  been  held  there  ever  since 
without  interruption. 

The  past  always,  merely  by  becoming  past, 
gathers  a  halo  of  romance  around  it.  The  stern 
old  pioneers  who  trudged  through  both  sand 
and  water  to  get  to  Eastham;  who  sat  on  bare 
planks  to  listen  to  the  long  discourses,  and  who 
slept  without  a  murmur  on  the  straw;  who 
waited  interminably  in  the  morning  for  their 
portion  of  fresh  water  —  doubtless  viewed  with 
contempt  the  softer  accommodations  of  Yar- 
mouth. But  we,  to  whom  the  first  Yarmouth 
days  are  almost  as  far  away  as  the  first  East- 
ham  ones,  look  back  at  them  both  with  curi- 
osity. 

To-day  there  are  cottages  and  concrete  walks 
and  booths  at  the  Camp-Meeting  Grounds. 
There  is  a  keeper's  house,  and  an  association 
building,  and  a  commodious  wooden  taber- 
nacle which  holds  about  five  hundred  people. 
But  there  are  plenty  of  Cape-Codders  who  will 
tell  you  of  the  days  when  there  were  no  such 
conveniences.  It  was  only  thirty-odd  years 
ago  that  camp-meeting  season  saw  a  whole 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    63 

host  of  tents,  dotting  the  grounds  Hke  mush- 
rooms. People  came  from  far  and  near  — 
fathers,  mothers,  children,  aunts,  and  grand- 
mothers. They  brought  their  own  tents  and 
huge  boxes  full  of  provisions  —  roast  chicken 
and  cookies  and  apples  and  sandwiches  — 
enough  to  feed  them  during  their  entire  ten 
days'  stay.  Those  who  did  not  own  their  own 
tents  were  apportioned  off  into  those  of  their 
church;  for  nearly  every  church  had  its  tent, 
divided  down  the  middle,  with  accommoda- 
tions for  the  men  on  one  side  of  the  dividing 
line  and  for  the  women  on  the  other.  Then 
followed  revivalists'  meetings,  prayer  meet- 
ings, experience  meetings.  There  were  conver- 
sions and  sermons  and  rousing  chorus  singings. 
It  was  the  fashion  for  good  church  members 
to  come  every  year,  bringing  their  entire 
families,  from  infants  in  arms  to  helpless  old 
folk. 

It  is  changed  now.  The  tents  have  given 
place  to  cottages,  built  in  the  curious  jigsaw 
architecture  characteristic  of  such  edifices. 
After  the  camp-meeting  season  is  over,  and 


64        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

before  it  begins,  the  cottages  are  rented  by  the 
association  to  people  who  may  or  may  not  have 
reUgious  aflfiliations.  There  is  less  spectacular 
exhortation,  and  more  of  the  tone  of  a  serious 
conference.  The  picnic  spirit  has  waned  some- 
what :  most  of  the  children  are  left  at  home,  and 
many  of  the  merely  curious  have  had  their 
curiosity  satisfied  by  now,  or  go  elsewhere  for 
excitement. 

And  yet  we  must  not  underestimate  the 
value  of  the  camp  meeting  to  the  vital  life  of 
the  Cape.  One  cannot  appreciate  the  caliber 
of  a  people,  their  temperament,  nor  their  ma- 
terial progress  without  understanding  some- 
thing of  their  religion.  Methodism  began  to 
gather  power  in  this  section  of  the  country  in 
the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  as  a 
reaction  from  the  formalism  of  the  Church  of 
England.  The  austere  meeting-houses  and  the 
impassioned  preaching  were  the  expressions  of 
a  people  to  whom  dignified  ritualism  and  Old- 
World  conventionalities  had  grown  wearisome. 
What  these  Cape-Codders  wanted  was  ''relig- 
ion in  earnest,"  as  Southey  said,  and  that  is 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    65 

what  they  got.  People  who  traveled  great  and 
diflfieult  distances  to  hear  a  preacher  were 
entirely  willing  to  listen  to  him  for  a  long  time. 
Two  and  three  hour  discourses  were  not  in 
the  least  boresome  to  them.  Obviously  no 
summary  of  the  Cape  is  complete  without 
mention  of  this  strong  and  simple  religious 
feeling  which  sustained  a  strong  and  simple 
people  so  admirably  for  two  hundred  years. 

Besides  its  camp-meeting  activities  Yar- 
mouth has  always  maintained  a  conspicuous 
church  life.  The  inevitable  concomitant  of 
small  rivalries,  schisms,  etc.,  although  they 
fill  many  pages  of  the  early  records,  are  hap- 
pily forgotten  by  now;  and  although  many  di- 
visions have  grown  out  from  the  original  organi- 
zation, the  essential  only  has  been  preserved, 
and  its  growth  has  extended  with  the  years. 
It  is  characteristic  that  the  first  church  build- 
ing antedated  the  incorporation  of  the  town- 
ship by  several  months.  It  stood  on  the  place 
called  Fort  Hill,  and  was  merely  a  log  house, 
thirty  feet  by  forty,  with  oiled  paper  in  place 
of  glass  in  the  windows.    Hither  the  faithful 


66        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

were  summoned  by  the  beating  on  a  drum,  and 
those  who  were  not  faithful,  but  "denied  the 
Scriptures  to  be  the  rule  of  life,"  received  cor- 
poral punishment  at  the  hands  of  the  magis- 
trates. People  came  from  miles  around  to  at- 
tend church:  in  storm  as  well  as  in  sunshine. 
At  first  they  came  on  foot,  but  as  animals  in- 
creased the  better  conditioned  came  on  horse- 
back. The  old  custom,  which  still  exists  in 
certain  primitive  parts  of  the  South  of  "riding 
and  tying,"  was  part  of  the  quaint  Sunday 
morning  procession  in  those  days.  The  hus- 
band and  wife  started  out  together  on  the  same 
horse,  he  with  his  musket  and  she  riding  be- 
hind him.  At  the  end  of  a  few  miles,  they  dis- 
mounted, tied  their  horse,  leaving  it  for  the 
couple  behind  them,  and  walked  on.  When  the 
second  pair  caught  up  with  them  they  in  turn 
dismounted,  and  walked  on,  and  the  first  cou- 
ple rode  again  for  a  certain  distance,  leaving 
the  horse  behind  as  before.  Thus  one  horse 
transferred  four  saddle  passengers  to  and  from 
the  place  of  worship.  The  first  minister  here 
was    Marmaduke    Matthews,    the    eloquent 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    67 

Welshman  who  was  matriculated  at  All  Souls' 
College  at  Oxford,  and  who  came  to  New  Eng- 
land in  1638  —  a  proof  that  culture  was  not 
lacking  on  the  Cape  in  those  early  days.  But 
culture  was  not  exclusive.  There  were  two 
hundred  praying  Indians  here  between  1667 
and  1699,  under  the  ministry  of  the  Reverend 
Thomas  Thornton  and  two  native  preachers. 
They  had  their  own  meeting-house,  northeast  of 
the  "Swans  Pond,"  just  above  a  spring  where 
Eliot  preached  to  them.  In  the  southern  part 
of  Yarmouth  there  was  an  Indian  Reserva- 
tion, and  as  late  as  1779  there  was  a  small 
cluster  of  wigwams  in  the  southeast  part  of 
the  town,  which  were  inhabitated  by  the  Paw- 
kannawkut  Indians.  The  original  name  of 
Yarmouth  was  an  Indian  one,  Mattacheese, 
which  is  an  Indian  name  signifying " old  lands" 
or  "planting -lands."  When  the  terminal  was 
added,  it  meant  "by  the  water."  Thus,  Mat- 
tacheeset  meant  "planting-lands  by  the  border 
of  the  water."  For  years  the  northeast  sec- 
tion of  the  town  was  known  as  "Hokkanom." 
And  certainly  one  of  the  best  proofs  of  the 


68        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

salutary  influence  of  the  church  life  is  that 
these  red  men  were  uniformly  well  treated  in 
the  town. 

The  first  church  was  followed  by  a  second 
and  a  third,  this  last  with  a  high  pulpit  and 
a  sounding-board  and  pews  —  marks  of  prog- 
ress. It  stood  on  the  county  road,  and  during 
the  Revolution  was  decorated  with  a  tower- 
ing liberty  pole.  Later  this  building  fell  into 
temporal  use,  being  used  for  a  store  and  a  post- 
office,  but  its  steeple  remained  an  important 
landmark  for  vessels.  It  was  finally  burned, 
and  in  1870  the  present  Methodist  Church  was 
built.  There  are  five  churches  in  Yarmouth 
to-day,  among  them  a  Roman  Catholic,  —  the 
Sacred  Heart,  dedicated  in  1902,  —  a  Univer- 
salist,  and  a  Swedenborgian.  (What  would 
the  first  settlers  say  to  that,  one  wonders!) 
And  the  town  also  has  the  honor  of  forming, 
in  1817,  the  second  temperance  society  in  the 
country. 

Many  eminent  men  are  associated  with  the 
history  of  Yarmouth:  not  only  admirable  sea 
captains  and   shipmasters  whose  names  are 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    69 

chiefly  remembered  by  their  descendants,  but 
men  like  Timothy  Alden,  direct  descendant  of 
John.  He  occupied  for  nearly  sixty  years  the 
pulpit  left  vacant  by  Marmaduke  Matthews. 
Joseph  White,  the  grandson  of  Peregrine 
White,  lived  at  Yarmouth  and  died  there  in 
1782  in  his  seventy-ninth  year,  leaving  behind 
him  a  staff,  about  three  feet  long,  with  a  brazen 
foot  and  a  wooden  head,  which  one  of  the  com- 
pany of  our  forefathers  had  in  his  hand  when 
he  stepped  on  the  well-known  rock  at  Ply- 
mouth. 

When  the  town  was  incorporated  in  1638,  by 
settlers  from  Saugus,  there  were  eight  college 
graduates  among  them.  John  Miller,  who  is 
mentioned  in  Mather's  "Magnalia"  as  one 
of  the  eighty-seven  ministers  who  had  been 
in  the  ministry  before  embarking  to  America, 
was  probably  the  first  minister  at  Yarmouth. 
John  Cotton  was  settled  here  iri  1693  —  dying 
here  twelve  years  later.  Anthony  Thatcher  — 
famous  through  Whittier's  poem,  the  ''Swan 
Song  of  Parson  Avery"  —  came  to  Yarmouth 
in  1639,  and  for  eight  generations  his  descend- 


70        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

ants  have  continued  to  exercise  a  wide  influ- 
ence in  the  affairs  of  town  and  State.  John 
Crow,  whose  name  began  to  be  written  "  Crow- 
ell"  in  the  third  generation,  was  also  one  of 
the  first  settlers,  as  were  the  gallant  sailor  Asa 
Eldridge,  Thomas  Howes,  Andrew  Hallett, 
William  Eldridge,  Thomas  Hatch,  and  others 
whose  names  are  still  conspicuous  all  over  the 
Cape. 

Besides  distinguished  men,  Yarmouth  has 
its  quota  of  fine  houses.  The  Chandler  Gary 
house,  which  was  torn  down  in  May,  1899,  after 
reaching  the  goodly  age  of  two  hundred  years, 
revealed  bullets  embedded  in  the  walls.  If 
any  house  was  ever  worthy  of  this  distinction 
surely  this  was,  for  it  was  here  that  the  loyal 
mothers  and  daughters  of  Yarmouth  gath- 
ered on  the  night  preceding  the  march  to 
Dorchester  Heights,  and  melted  up  their  pew- 
ter dishes  into  bullets  to  supply  their  husbands 
and  sons.  And  the  next  day  saw  eighty-one 
men,  half  the  effective  force  of  the  town, 
marching  to  Boston  under  the  leadership  of 
Captain  Joshua  Gray. 


YARMOUTH  AND  METHODISM    71 

The  common  schools  at  Yarmouth  were 
among  the  first  on  the  Cape,  and  were  —  and 
still  are  —  uniformly  excellent.  Whaling,  cod- 
fishing,  turpentine  gathered  from  the  forests, 
and  salt  manufacturing  brought  good  business 
to  the  town  for  fifty  years.  Then,  because  of 
the  abolition  of  duties  on  foreign  salt  and  the 
development  of  source  and  supply  in  our  own 
country,  this  industry  ceased  to  be  profitable.^ 
Fishing  and  shipbuilding  came  to  an  end  with 
the  Civil  War,  the  latter  partly  because  of  the 
exhaustion  of  the  timber  supply. 

The  record  of  Yarmouth  is  an  honorable 
one.  Famous  fishers  of  men  and  famous  fish- 
ers of  the  deep  have  both  left  their  clean  rec- 
ords, their  self-respecting  descendants,  and 
their  substantial  houses.  Worldly  wealth  has 
descended  in  many  instances,  and  accounts  for 
the  air  of  easy-going  comfort  in  the  place  to 
tell  us  of  the  past.  And  the  treasure  in  heaven, 
for  which  this  community  so  zealously  labored, 
has  also  gathered  interest,  and  still  accrues  to 
the  glory  and  the  credit  of  the  town. 

^  See  chap.  vi. 


Chapter  VI 


NEW  INDUSTRIES  AND  OLD  IN  DENNIS 

THOUSANDS  and  thousands  of  years  ago 
—  so  the  fable  runs  —  there  was  an  enor- 
mous eagle,  quite  as  enormous  as  the  roc  in 
Sinbad  the  Sailor's  tale.  He  used  to  hover 
over  the  South  Shore  of  Cape  Cod,  and  when- 
ever he  saw  little  children  playing,  he  would 
pounce  down  upon  them  and  carry  one  away 
in  his  terrible  iron  talons.  Maushope  was  an 
Indian  giant  —  gentle  and  huge.  Unlike  most 
of  the  giants  of  folk-lore,  he  loved  little  boys 
and  girls,  and  the  onslaughts  of  the  eagle  en- 
raged him.  He  brooded  and  brooded  over  them, 
and  one  day  as  the  eagle  flapped  away  with  a 
screaming  child  in  his  claws,  Maushope  started 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  73 

to  chase  him.  The  bird  flew  out  to  sea,  and 
the  giant  strode  after  him.  Farther  and  farther 
flew  the  bird:  deeper  and  deeper  waded  the 
giant  —  but,  of  course,  since  he  was  a  giant  he 
could  wade  into  the  very  depths  of  the  ocean. 
By  and  by  he  came  to  Nantucket,  which  until 
that  time  had  never  been  known  to  the  in- 
habitants of  the  mainland.  And  there,  under 
a  tree,  he  found  the  bones  of  all  the  children 
the  eagle  had  devoured.  He  sat  down  beside 
them  and  grieved  for  a  long  time.  Finally  he 
thought  he  would  feel  better  if  he  had  a  smoke, 
but  he  searched  the  island  in  vain  for  tobacco. 
So  he  filled  his  pipe  with  poke  —  a  weed  that, 
ever  since  that  time,  the  Indians  have  used 
as  a  substitute.  He  smoked  and  he  smoked, 
and  the  smoke  drifted  back  across  the  sound 
to  the  mainland.  That  was  the  beginning  of 
fogs  on  Cape  Cod,  and  that  is  what  the  abo- 
rigines meant  when  they  said,  "Old  Maushope 
is  smoking  his  pipe." 

The  moist  fumes  of  Maushope's  pipe  pene- 
trate every  corner  of  Cape  Cod,  but  at  Dennis 
they  come  less  frequently  than  at  most  other 


74        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

places.  For  Dennis  is  high,  —  Scargo  Hill  is 
the  highest  elevation  in  Barnstable  County, 
—  and  this  is  probably  the  reason  that  Dennis 
was  among  the  first  of  the  Cape  Cod  towns  to 
attract  summer  people. 

It  is  an  interesting  coincidence  that  the  two 
largest  industries  on  the  Cape  to-day  —  sum- 
mer people  and  cranberries  —  had  their  ori- 
gin in  the  very  place  where  the  two  earliest 
industries  —  fishing  and  salt-making  —  were 
also  conspicuously  vigorous.  This  placid  little 
town  of  Dennis,  which  automobilists  whiz 
through  without  special  attention,  had,  in 
1865,  a  fishing  fleet  of  forty-eight  vessels  and 
seven  hundred  and  twenty-two  men,  represent- 
ing one  hundred  and  seventeen  thousand  dol- 
lars of  capital.  There  was  a  coastwise  fleet 
also  of  eighty-five  vessels  and  four  hundred 
and  forty-five  men.  Nearly  twelve  hundred 
men  sailed  from  this  one  port  alone,  and  thirty 
years  before  one  hundred  and  fifty  skippers 
sailing  from  various  American  ports  all  claimed 
Dennis  as  their  home.  They  often  took  their 
wives  with  them  in  those  jovial  days,  and  came 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  75 

back  with  jars  of  Chinese  sweetmeats,  shim- 
mering Indian  stuffs,  tamarinds,  coeoanuts, 
parrots,  fans,  feathers,  spicy  wood,  and  great 
shells.  One  likes  to  picture  the  friendly  com- 
motion which  such  advents  and  departures 
caused  in  the  little  village.  Fast  and  famous 
clippers  were  built  here,  also,  by  the  Shiver- 
icks;  more  than  one  of  them  noted  for  their 
swift  voyages  from  Calcutta  to  San  Francisco. 

But  although  Dennis  made  an  excellent  and 
honorable  livelihood  out  of  the  ocean,  this  does 
not  distinguish  her  from  half  a  dozen  other 
Cape  towns.  It  is  her  experiments  with  solar 
evaporation  of  sea-water  for  salt  and  her  dis- 
covery of  the  value  of  the  cranberry  that  give 
the  quiet  hamlet  a  place  in  the  economic  his- 
tory of  the  country. 

In  1855  there  were  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
five  salt  manufactories  on  Cape  Cod,  and 
eighty-five  in  Dennis  alone,  turning  out  thirty- 
four  thousand  bushels  of  salt  annually.  All 
over  the  Cape,  and  especially  around  this 
region  of  Dennis,  there  stood  on  the  hills  which 
overlooked  the  sea  windmills  which  pumped 


76        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

sea-water  into  wooden  vats  for  the  making  of 
salt.  On  the  lowlands  were  acres  of  these  vats, 
their  conical-shaped  roofs  contributing  an  odd 
touch  to  the  landscape.  When  it  rained  there 
was  a  great  stampede  to  close  the  vats  and 
keep  out  the  fresh  water. 

It  all  started  in  1776  when  Captain  John 
Sears,  from  that  part  of  Dennis  which  went 
under  the  attractive  name  of  "Suet,"  con- 
structed the  first  experimental  salt  vat  on 
Cape  Cod.  His  experience  was  similar  to  that 
of  most  inventors:  the  first  year  the  works 
leaked,  and  every  one  laughed  at  them,  call- 
ing them  "Sears's  Folly."  The  second  year  he 
obtained  thirty  bushels  of  salt;  the  fourth  year 
a  hand  pump  was  introduced  in  place  of  the 
buckets  which  had  formerly  been  used  to  pour 
water  into  the  vats.  In  1785  a  wind  pump 
was  contrived  with  the  assistance  of  Captain 
Nathaniel  Freeman,  of  Harwich.  Eight  years 
later  Mr.  Reuben  Sears,  of  Harwich,  invented 
the  shives,  or  rollers,  for  the  covers  which  pro- 
tected the  vat  from  the  rain.  After  that  com- 
petition sprang  up  fast  and  furious,  and  im- 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  77 

provements  were  constantly  made  —  greatly 
to  the  chagrin  of  the  original  inventors,  but 
highly  advantageous  to  the  community.  The 
industry  assumed  significant  proportions;  the 
salt  produced  by  this  system  of  solar  evapora- 
tion resembling  Lisbon  salt  —  pure,  strong, 
and  free  from  lime;  also  Glauber's  salt  from 
crystallization  in  winter.  It  took  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty  gallons  of  sea-water  to  make  a 
bushel  of  salt,  and  at  one  time  —  in  1783  — 
salt  sold  for  eight  dollars  a  bushel.  Three 
years  before  this  the  General  Court  tried  to 
encourage  the  idea  of  manufacture  by  offering 
a  bounty  of  three  shillings  for  every  bushel 
produced.  At  one  time  there  was  over  two 
million  dollars  invested  in  these  various  salt- 
works. And  then  the  decline  came.  This  was 
partly  due  to  the  increased  value  of  the  pine 
which  came  from  Maine,  necessary  for  mak- 
ing the  vats.  As  the  various  salt-works  went 
out  of  business  the  lumber  was  taken  and  con- 
verted into  buildings.  And  more  than  one 
possessor  of  a  barn  or  shed,  constructed  of 
these  timbers,  may  still  be  heard  complaining 


78        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

because  no  nail  will  last  long  in  the  salt-soaked 
wood,  but  rusts  out  in  short  order,  even  after 
all  these  years. 

Unfortunately,  the  policy  of  the  National 
Government  was  not  consistent  toward  this 
industry,  sometimes  encouraging  it  by  placing 
a  high  duty  on  imported  salt,  and  at  other 
times  reducing  the  impost.  The  bounty  of- 
fered by  the  State  in  the  infancy  of  the  indus- 
try was  afterwards  withdrawn.  The  develop- 
ment of  salt  springs  in  New  York  and  other 
places  also  tended  to  make  the  business  less 
profitable.  Thus  it  gradually  and  steadily 
declined. 

But  exciting  as  the  invention  of  the  salt- 
works was  to  the  small  town,  which  suddenly 
found  itself  in  competition  with  Russia  and 
Sicily,  it  was  the  land  and  not  the  water  which 
bestowed  upon  Cape  Cod  her  most  modern 
and  permanent  financial  status.  This  was  the 
cultivation  of  the  cranberry,  which  was  first 
thought  of  by  Henry  Hall,  an  inhabitant  of 
Dennis,  about  eighty  years  ago. 

Every  visitor  to  the  Cape  has  been  struck 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  79 

by  the  strange  and  singular  beauty  of  the  low 
flat  bogs,  perfectly  level,  covered  with  a  thick, 
close  vine,  with  red  berries  gleaming  against 
the  white  sand  in  autumn,  and  the  vines  red- 
dening, too,  as  the  season  advances,  giving  a 
unique  touch  to  the  landscape,  dear  to  the 
heart  of  the  Cape-Codder.  You  see  them 
everywhere  —  these  bogs :  tucked  under  the 
protection  of  a  hill;  skirting  a  stream;  lying  in 
winding  valleys  below  the  level  of  the  carriage 
roads,  and  suddenly  appearing  —  trim  rec- 
tangular clearings,  walled  about  by  a  dense 
swamp  growth  —  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
woods.  When  you  see  one  of  these  bogs  — 
even,  thrifty,  level  —  you  are  looking  at  the 
consummation  of  an  industry  which  has  been 
indissolubly  linked  with  the  name  of  Cape 
Cod  since  1677.  For  it  was  in  that  year  that 
his  loyal  subjects  in  Massachusetts  presented 
Charles  the  Second  with  a  gift  of  three  thou- 
sand codfish,  two  hogsheads  of  samp,  and 
ten  barrels  of  cranberries!  These  historic  ten 
barrels  were  filled  with  the  wild  cranberry, 
which  has  always  grown  freely  in  certain  re- 


80        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

gions  of  the  Cape.  Nearly  two  hundred  years 
elapsed  before  it  occurred  to  any  one  to  ex- 
periment scientifically  with  the  piquant  fruit. 
Then  Mr.  Hall,  selecting  an  old  peat  swamp 
of  practically  no  value,  cleared  it  of  trees  and 
bushes  and  set  out  cranberry  vines,  which  he 
tended  with  the  solicitous  care  we  associate 
with  exotics.  His  success  was  immediate,  and 
instantly  the  whole  town  set  to  work  clearing 
out  the  numerous  swamps  and  planting  wild 
cranberry  vines.  And  then,  like  some  benign 
enchantment,  money  in  the  form  of  scarlet 
berries  began  to  pour  out  of  the  ground.  Fami- 
lies which  had  been  struggling  with  poverty 
found  themselves  independent;  widows,  of 
whom  there  are  always  an  unconscionable 
number  in  any  seafaring  place,  became  the 
surprised  and  grateful  recipients  of  a  few  hun- 
dred —  sometimes  a  few  thousand  —  dollars 
a  year.  And  more  than  one  old  sea  captain 
scratched  his  head  in  bewilderment  when  he 
realized  that  he  was  getting  richer  from  an  old 
swamp  where  he  used  to  chase  foxes  than  he 
had  ever  been  as  master  of  a  vessel. 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  81 

Cape  Cod  is,  without  question,  the  best  re- 
gion for  cranberries  in  the  whole  world.  E very- 
variety  may  be  grown  here  more  easily  and 
better  than  anywhere  else.  And  as  there  is  no 
substitute  for  the  odd  little  fruit,  it  is  likely 
that  the  Cape  will  always  hold  the  supremacy. 

The  culture  has  now  been  reduced  to  an  ex- 
act science.  A  swamp  is  cleared  from  its  wild 
growth,  leveled  like  a  floor,  and  six  inches  of 
clear  sand  are  carted  over  the  heavy  bog  soil; 
or  a  pond  or  marsh  may  be  filled  up  and  cov- 
ered with  sand  in  the  same  way.  Trenches  are 
cut,  a  dike  is  thrown  up,  and  a  brook  turned 
so  as  to  run  through  it.  It  has  gates,  so  that  in 
the  spring  the  land  may  be  flooded  to  kill  the 
insects,  and  in  the  fall  to  protect  against  the 
frosts.  Sometimes  one  sees  a  row  of  bird- 
houses  beside  a  cranberry  bog,  to  encourage 
the  insect-eaters  to  take  up  a  permanent 
habitation  there.  Vines  are  placed  at  regu- 
lar intervals,  making  such  a  solid  mat  that 
weeding  is  hardly  necessary,  after  the  third 
year.  It  costs  from  two  hundred  and  fifty 
to  a  thousand  dollars  to  make   a   cranberry 


82        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

bog,  and  it  takes  three  years  for  it  to  come 
into  bearing  condition.  But,  once  started, 
the  profits  are  large.  In  very  good  years 
the  interest  on  money  so  invested  is  one  hun- 
dred per  cent.  In  very  poor  years  the  crops 
may  be  a  total  failure.  But  an  average  return 
of  thirty  per  cent  is  not  high:  fifty  per  cent  is 
probably  nearer  accurate.  One  bog  of  sixteen 
acres  not  far  from  Dennis  netted  in  one  year 
eight  thousand  dollars.  Half  an  acre  at  Har- 
wichport  yielded  in  one  season  ninety-eight 
barrels.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  the  possession  of 
a  good  bog  will  carry  a  thrifty  Cape-Codder 
through  the  year. 

But  the  traveler  through  this  region  will 
probably  be  more  struck  by  the  picturesque 
than  the  economic  value  of  the  cranberry  bog. 
Now  that  the  Portuguese  are  coming  in  such 
numbers  —  sometimes  almost  doubling  the 
native  population  during  the  cranberry  sea- 
son —  much  of  the  distinctive  flavor  of  the 
festival  has  been  lost.  The  gayly  colored  fig- 
ures, kneeling  in  long  lines  and  picking  rapidly 
and  patiently  all  day  long,  make  as  decorative 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  83 

a  scene  for  the  outsider  as  ever.  But  to  the 
native  the  season  no  longer  holds  its  charac- 
teristic charm.  For  in  the  old  days  it  was  the 
custom  of  everybody,  storekeeper  and  house- 
keeper and  children,  —  for  whose  convenience 
the  school  season  was  conveniently  regulated, 

—  the  minister  and  his  wife,  a  city  cousin  or 
two,  young  lovers  making  plans  for  the  future 

—  all  to  congregate  on  the  bogs.  The  hay 
wagons  were  converted  into  impromptu  trans- 
portation carts,  and  the  family  with  a  horse 
stopped  at  the  door  of  the  family  without  one 

—  giving  the  children  and  old  folks  a  friendly 
"lift"  on  the  way.  And  while  the  young  peo- 
ple picked  for  dear  life,  resuscitating  old  gibes 
and  jokes  that  had  been  put  away  since  last 
cranberry  time,  their  mothers  sat  under  huge 
umbrellas  keeping  *Hally,"  and  their  fathers 
loaded  the  crates  upon  the  wagons.  There  was 
even  work  for  the  very  aged.  One  could  be 
eighty  and  half  blind, but  if  one  had  "screened" 
(sorted  the  good  berries  from  the  bad  over  a 
long  screen)  for  twenty-five  years,  one  could 
still  earn  a  dollar  and  a  quarter  a  day  in  the 


84        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

gossipy  atmosphere,  and  at  the  not  too  strenu- 
ous labor  of  the  ''screening-house."  It  was  all 
very  jolly :  there  was  much  amiable  competition 
and  rivalry,  and  he  who  achieved  a  hundred 
measures  —  or  six  hundred  quarts  —  in  a  day 
earned  ten  dollars,  and  made,  besides,  a  rec- 
ord that  was  not  forgotten  until  it  was  ex- 
celled. 

That  was  when  all  the  picking  was  done  by 
hand,  and  was  paid  for  at  the  rate  of  ten  cents 
a  measure.  Now  the  picking  is  done  by  the 
aid  of  a  scoop,  and  one  can  get  a  hundred 
measures  much  more  quickly;  but  he  will 
only  get  paid  six  or  seven  cents  a  measure  — 
so  the  advantage  and  disadvantage  run  quite 
evenly. 

There  are  still  towns  on  the  Cape  where  the 
noon  hour  is  a  picnic  and  the  whole  cranberry 
season  partakes  of  the  nature  of  a  festival.  But 
every  year  they  are  fewer.  The  ever-industri- 
ous Portuguese  are  good  pickers,  and  honest. 
The  natives,  however,  who  came  as  much  for 
the  fun  as  for  the  money,  feel  that  cranberry- 
ing  is  no  longer  a  family  affair.    One  cannot 


-''-^-r"-"!  j  (^, 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS  85 

picnic  with  the  same  freedom  with  strangers 
as  one  did  with  friends. 

But  the  industry  continues,  although  the 
sociabiHty  is  gone.  The  cranberry  flourishes, 
and  will  probably  continue  to  do  so  as  long  as 
we  gather  around  the  Thanksgiving  table  with 
a  turkey  imperatively  demanding  this  partic- 
ular condiment. 

One  cannot  leave  Dennis  without  a  mention 
of  that  other  source  of  income  which  is  even 
more  lucrative  than  the  cranberry  —  the  sum- 
mer people.  The  whole  Cape  is  gradually  be- 
coming the  recreation  portion  of  New  Eng- 
land. The  balmy  air,  the  warm  salt  water,  the 
healthfulness  and  the  quaint  atmosphere  of 
both  the  landscape  and  the  architecture  will 
always  be  worth  a  cash  return  to  the  city 
dwellers.  And  where  summer  people  go  they 
create  a  different  set  of  standards  —  some 
good  and  some  bad.  It  is  stimulating  to  the 
natives  of  a  seashore  place  to  come  in  contact 
with  people  from  the  outer  world.  The  way 
in  which  the  country  homesteads  bloomed  out 
with  flower  gardens  and  window  boxes  as  soon 


86        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

as  the  summer  visitors  initiated  these  touches 
on  their  own  rented  or  bought  or  built  resi- 
dences is  a  pretty  proof  of  the  value  of  example. 
Friendships  are  made,  too,  and  all  sorts  of 
pleasant  ties  are  established.  For  the  Cape- 
Codder  is  by  no  means  a  dull  rustic,  but  a 
shrewd,  intelligent,  and  frequently  delightful 
character  —  who  can  give  more  things  than 
butter  and  eggs  to  the  city  folk  who  come  to 
know  him. 

But  the  annual  influx  has  some  effects  not 
so  admirable.  And  one  must  admit  that  the 
stranger  within  the  gates  of  a  Cape  village  is 
often  uncomfortably  conscious  of  being  preyed 
upon  as  well  as  served  by  the  community. 
More  than  one  proprietor  of  the  "general 
store"  has  an  uncanny  similarity  to  the  spider 
in  his  hole  —  waiting  until  his  victims  appear, 
then  sucking  them  dry,  and  retiring  for  eight 
months  to  digest  the  gains  of  his  too-closely 
driven  bargains. 

But  good  roads  and  good  hotels,  well-built 
houses  and  progressive  shops  —  these  are  with- 
out question  of  great  value  to  any  township. 


INDUSTRIES  IN  DENNIS 


87 


And  this  is  what  the  summer  people  have 
brought  and  are  bringing,  —  more  and  more 
of  them  every  year,  —  and  to  such  an  extent 
that  one  feels  quite  justified  in  calling  them  at 
present  the  most  profitable  source  of  income  to 
the  Cape. 


Chapter  VII 

BREWSTER  AND  CAPE  COD 
ARCHITECTURE 

IT  is  impossible  to  pass  through  Brewster  ^ 
without  being  impressed  by  its  air  of  mod- 
est prosperity,  of  tidiness,  of  lack  of  poverty 
and  absence  of  pretension.  Neat,  adequate, 
homelike  —  the  small  farmhouses  repeat  the 
same  general  line  and  style  of  architecture, 
and  give  evidence  of  a  people  thrifty,  self-re- 
specting, and  comfortable. 

The  architecture  of  the  Cape  differs  radi- 
cally from  that  of  Maine,  of  Connecticut,  of 
northern  Massachusetts,  or  of  the  South,  even 

1  Brewster  was  originally  the  North  Parish  of  Harwich.  It 
was  named  for  an  old  Pilgrim  pastor  who  came  over  in  the 
Mayflower. 


BREWSTER  89 

although  built  at  the  same  time  and  under 
similar  conditions. 

These  men  came  from  the  south  of  England 
and  in  their  minds  and  memories  was  the  sim- 
ple. Devon  or  Cornish  cottage  which  uncon- 
sciously influenced  their  hands  when  they  fash- 
ioned in  wood  their  home  in  the  new  land. 
Their  common  sense  suggested  that  the  house 
should  nestle  under  a  hill  or  behind  a  sand 
dune,  out  of  the  way  of  the  winter  winds, 
while  their  love  of  the  sea  usually  found  a  way 
to  get  a  glimpse  —  from  side  door  or  back 
window  —  of  the  dark-blue  water.  And  so  we 
still  find  them,  all  over  the  Cape:  a  story  and 
a  half,  shingled,  gray,  and  weather-beaten, 
nestled  in  a  nook,  across  a  meadow,  or  haK 
hidden  under  trees  of  a  newer  growth,  or  in 
decent  lines  on  either  side  of  the  undisturbed 
streets  of  the  town. 

Although  individual  houses  may  be  slightly 
modified,  yet  the  majority  of  them  adhere  to 
one  general  pattern  —  as  integral  a  part  of  the 
Cape  landscape  as  the  galleried  and  pillared 
mansion  of  Virginia  is  to  that  lovely  region. 


90        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

This  general  pattern  is  a  story  and  a  half,  ab- 
solutely unadorned:  there  is  no  gable  to  break 
the  perfect  slope  of  the  roof;  no  porch  or  even 
hood  to  mar  the  utter  simplicity  of  the  door. 
This  well-proportioned  portal  is  flush  with  the 
lintel :  it  does  not  project  nor  is  it  recessed,  and 
rarely  has  side  or  fan  lights.  It  is  a  brave, 
strong  door,  to  shut  out  the  storm  and  let  in 
the  stranger. 

It  opens  into  a  tiny  vestibule,  with  a  fair- 
sized  room  on  either  side.  One  of  these  rooms 
is  the  parlor,  with  a  three-ply  carpet,  a  horse- 
hair sofa,  a  corner  cupboard,  on  which  are 
arranged  sea  shells  and  strange  bits  of  coral 
which  "grandfather"  brought  back  from  some 
round-the-world  voyage.  A  hair  wreath,  which 
incorporates  the  black  tresses  of  maturity  with 
the  blonde  curls  of  infancy  and  the  white  locks 
of  old  age,  —  laboriously  worked  into  the 
gruesome  semblance  of  flowers,  —  hangs  above 
the  excellently  built  mantel.  This  room  is 
used  rarely:  the  chairs  do  not  suggest  com- 
fort; its  two  windows  facing  the  street  and  its 
one  window  facing  the  side  yard  are  never 


BREWSTER  91 

opened,  except  once  a  year  at  the  time  of 
spring  house-cleaning. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  narrow  entry  is 
the  downstairs  bedroom:  perhaps  it  is  "grand- 
ma's" room;  perhaps  it  is  the  guest-room. 
With  its  dark,  chintz-covered  wing  chair,  and 
the  httle  Ught-stand  close  to  the  four-posted, 
cherry  bedstead  with  a  patchwork  quilt,  it  is 
a  quaint  and  not  uncomfortable  room.  But 
there  is  no  luxury  nor  elegance  nor  superfluity 
here.  The  Cape-Codders  have  always  been 
a  plain  and  thrifty  folk. 

Behind  these  two  rooms,  and  reached  by 
passing  through  one  or  the  other,  is  the  "mid- 
dle room"  running  almost  the  length  of  the 
house.  It  usually  has  a  side  door  leading  di- 
rectly out  into  the  yard,  without  even  the 
pause  of  a  landing,  —  a  meager  enough  little 
side  yard,  too,  with  a  picket  fence  and  a  few 
perennials  in  unformed  beds.  At  the  opposite 
end  is  the  buttery,  its  shelves  filled  with  dishes 
and  food;  and  close  against  the  buttery  — 
between  it  and  the  guest-room  —  is  the  little 
"kitchen  bedchamber,"  a  place  of  warmth  and 


92        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

refuge  in  winter  and  of  stifling  contraction  in 
summer.  This  "middle  room"  is  the  principal 
room  of  the  house.  It  serves  as  dining-  and 
sitting-room  in  summer,  and  as  kitchen  and 
dining-room  in  winter.  To  its  side  door  the 
neighbors  come,  seeking  to  borrow  a  broom  or 
three  eggs.  Strangers  are  the  only  ones  who  go 
to  the  lilac-crowded  front  door.  The  big  cen- 
tral chimney  has  its  widest  open  fireplace  in 
this  "middle  room,"  a  crane  with  hanging 
hooks,  where,  aforetimes,  the  family  food  was 
cooked  on  Saturday  to  last  a  long  week.  By 
many  of  them  still  hang  the  long-handled 
shovels,  the  tongs,  the  bellows,  the  three-legged 
pots,  and  queer  Dutch  ovens  —  curious  relics  of 
a  housewife's  duties  long  ago. 

Besides  the  two  front  rooms  and  the  mid- 
dle room,  there  is  almost  invariably  an  ell  or 
lean-to,  of  one  story,  where  the  summer  kit- 
chen holds  its  own,  and  which  is  woodshed 
and  general  utility  place  in  winter. 

The  steps  —  which  are  as  plain  as  a  ship's 
ladder  and  almost  as  steep  —  rise,  unadorned 
by  baluster  or  newel  post,  either  directly  out 


BREWSTER  93 

of  the  tiny  front  vestibule  or  out  of  the  middle 
room  by  the  fireplace.  They  lead  to  the  upper 
story  where  there  are  usually  three  bedrooms 
—  the  two  smaller  ones  possibly  unfinished, 
and  the  large  one  paneled  in  white  pine.  This 
large  bedroom  was  originally  used  by  the  old 
sea  captain,  and  it  may  be  fashioned  some- 
thing like  a  ship's  cabin  with  a  slightly  curved 
ceiling.  The  narrow  doors  which  open  out  of 
the  bedrooms  lead  directly  on  to  the  precipi- 
tous stairway  —  and  one  early  learns  to  put 
out  a  foot  with  caution  when  emerging  from 
one's  room. 

In  each  of  the  old  towns  and  ''neighbor- 
hoods" stands  a  "great  house"  or  several 
"great  houses,"  two  stories  and  a  half,  square, 
flat-roofed,  or,  like  their  lowlier  neighbors, 
pitch-roofed.  They  are  handsome  edifices,  — 
gray-shingled  or  clapboarded  and  painted 
white,  —  with  shutters,  a  side  porch,  steps  at 
the  side  door,  and  with  a  large  story  and  a  half 
ell.  But  in  spite  of  their  added  dignity,  they 
are  still  typically  Cape  houses,  and  not  in  the 
least  like  the  old-fashioned  mansions  in  Ports- 


94        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

mouth  or  in  the  Berkshires.  It  was  here  that 
the  selectmen  Uved,  where  the  mail  was  de- 
livered once  or  twice  a  week,  and  where  the 
peripatetic  missionary  spent  the  night.  Many 
a  quiet  caucus  was  held  in  the  big  back  kitchen, 
with  a  mug  of  hard  cider  to  help  the  talk  along. 
But  the  majority  of  these  finer  houses  were 
built  by  Brewster  sea  captains — for  Brewster's 
aristocracy  was  composed  of  these  shrewd  and 
daring  men,  who  made  fortunes,  many  of  them 
the  beginnings  of  larger  ones,  for  their  de- 
scendants of  to-day  in  Boston,  New  York,  and 
the  West,  and  who  built  substantial  homes  and 
planted  dignified  trees  that  still  shade  them. 
In  the  old  Brewster  houses  were  ivory  carv- 
ings and  Japanese  silk  hangings,  sandalwood 
boxes  and  alabaster  images  of  the  Coliseum 
and  the  Leaning  Tower  of  Pisa.  On  each  side 
of  the  grand,  unused  front  doors  were  mam- 
moth sea  shells  of  curious  shape.  In  the  closets, 
on  the  ''what-nots,"  and  ranged  on  the  shelves 
of  the  little  cabinets,  were  boxes  of  other  shells 
picked  up  on  tropic  beaches  or  purchased  in 
the  bazaars  of  Calcutta  or  Mauritius. 


BREWSTER  95 

There  is  another  distinctive  feature  of  Cape 
architecture,  now  passing  fast,  —  the  wind- 
mill, —  like  a  witch  with  a  peaked  cap  and 
outstretched  arms  and  a  slanting  broomstick, 
reminding  us  that  the  Pilgrims  came  from 
Holland.  Capping  half  a  hundred  hills  they 
used  to  dominate  the  landscape.  The  farmer 
drove  his  heavy,  creaking  wagon  up  to  them 
by  a  winding  path,  and  haggled  for  coarse  or 
fine  grain  and  the  price  of  it.  The  hood  was 
turned  by  oxen,  slowly,  until  the  sails  were  ad- 
justed to  catch  the  wind.  These  inimitably 
quaint  relics  have  outlived  their  usefulness, 
although  in  many  of  them  the  beams  and 
timbers  pegged  together  with  wooden  pegs  are 
still  stanch.  Not  a  few  have  been  converted 
into  tea-houses,  curiosity  shops,  or  a  guest- 
house on  a  summer  estate  —  a  pampered  old 
age  for  those  crude  and  sturdy  helpers  of  a 
Puritan  age. 

The  men  who  built  these  houses  and  these 
mills  were  a  conspicuously  fine  lot.  Many  of 
them  were  engaged  in  privateering  and  whal- 
ing: of  the  thirty-two  soldiers  whose  graves 


96        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

are  marked  in  the  old  burying-ground,  as  hav- 
ing served  as  soldiers  in  the  Revolution,  a  great 
number  of  them  were  sailors.  More  ship- 
masters engaged  in  foreign  trade  went  from 
the  town  of  Brewster  than  from  any  other 
town  or  place  in  the  country  in  proportion  to 
its  size.  From  a  population  numbering  about 
a  thousand  people,  we  have  names  of  one 
hundred  and  fifteen  shipmasters  living  there 
since  1840.  In  1850,  the  height  of  the  town's 
prosperity,  there  were  over  fifty  living  there 
at  one  time. 

Those  to  whom  architectural  relics  of  the 
past  are  precious  must  always  be  interested  in 
an  event  of  the  War  of  1812,  which  preserved 
the  town  intact.  A  demand  was  made  by  the 
British  commander  upon  the  people  of  Brew- 
ster for  four  thousand  dollars  for  immunity 
from  invasion  and  destruction  of  property.  A 
meeting  was  held,  a  delegation  waited  upon 
the  British  commander,  and  finally,  after  a 
vain  argument,  it  was  decided  best  to  give 
security  for  the  sum.  Measures  were  taken  to 
tax  salt-works,  buildings  of   all  descriptions, 


BREWSTER  97 

and  vessels  owned  in  town  or  frequenting  the 
shore.  The  day  before  the  term  of  grace  ex* 
pired,  the  four  thousand  dollars  was  paid  and 
the  safety  of  the  town  guaranteed.  While  the 
inhabitants  of  Brewster  were  severely  criti- 
cized for  their  action  in  this  matter,  they  con- 
tended that  as  the  National  Government  had 
left  them  in  a  defenseless  condition,  they  were 
impelled  to  do  the  best  they  could  to  avert  the 
destruction  of  the  town. 

It  is  impossible  to  discuss  the  architecture 
of  the  Cape  without  a  word  of  the  Italian 
villas  and  bungalows  and  English  manors  and 
seashore  "cottages"  which  mark  the  trail  of 
the  summer  visitors.  Occasionally  some  sum- 
mer resident  will  have  the  taste  and  sentiment 
to  remodel  an  old  homestead  so  carefully  that 
it  will  retain  its  perfect  line  and  contour  in  the 
landscape,  while  accommodating  a  family  who 
demand  the  modern  comforts  of  living.  But 
these  renovations  are  not  common.  Most  of 
the  summer  colonies  are  ugly  enough:  a  blot 
upon  the  landscape  and  the  seascape,  forever 
unrelated  to  the  homely  soil  and  the  brooding 


98        CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

hills,  against  which  the  Devon  and  Cornish 
transcripts  fitted  so  lovingly. 

Besides  the  homes,  the  great  house,  the 
summer  colony,  and  the  windmill,  there  are 
the  church  and  the  schoolhouse,  both  distinc- 
tively of  the  Cape,  neither  influenced  nor 
marred  by  the  swarm  of  summer  visitors  nor 
by  the  rising  tide  of  Portuguese. 

The  "little  gray  church  on  the  windy  hill" 
is  usually  small,  and  if  it  stands  on  the  edge 
of  a  graveyard  it  is  apt  to  be  picturesque  and 
quaint.  But  if  it  is  unadorned  by  trees,  it  is 
cold  and  uninviting.  Methodist  or  Baptist  — 
the  horror  of  Popery  —  has  divorced  it  from 
the  charm  of  the  churches  of  Old  England,  and 
even  from  the  best  of  New  England.  The  Cape 
churches  are  not  as  a  rule  as  attractive  as  the 
Cape  houses. 

The  schoolhouse,  on  the  other  hand,  is  often 
quite  pleasing.  It  is  usually  an  unpretentious, 
one-story,  useful  structure,  with  two  front 
doors,  although  the  boys  and  girls  use  both  or 
either,  with  flagstaff  and  well-tramped  yard. 
From  it  pour  out  groups  of  merriest  children, 


BREWSTER  99 

red  and  brown  and  black  in  indiscriminate 
mirth.  It  is  rather  singular  that,  in  spite  of  the 
conspicuously  high  educational  standard  of 
Barnstable  County,  the  school  yard  is  rarely 
well  kept.  One  does  not  see  the  window  boxes 
and  the  flower  beds  that  brighten  many  a 
school  yard  in  western  or  northern  Massa- 
chusetts. 

The  last  earthly  habitation  of  the  native  is 
perhaps  the  most  beautiful  of  all.  The  grave- 
yard, —  selected  with  care,  either  for  the  view 
or  for  convenience  or  economy,  —  while  poor 
in  lofty  monuments  or  cypress  walks  or  decora- 
tive beds,  is  usually  indescribably  charming. 
It  is  not  crowded:  the  rounded  mounds  sink 
drowsily  into  the  green  grass.  Here  and  there 
are  stones  which  commemorate  men  lying  in 
graves  that  never  have  been  digged  —  under 
the  lapping  waves.  Their  families  placed  the 
gray  slate  slab  or  table  to  be  a  record,  then  felt 
their  duty  done  and  turned  to  the  care  of  the 
living.  Of  course,  each  graveyard  —  however 
small  —  has  its  soldiers'  monument,  for  the 
Cape  gave  right  royally  of  her  sons  in  time  of 


100   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

war;  and  in  or  near  the  family  plot  stands  the 
shaft  to  Ephraim,  Noel,  or  Ebenezer,  and  his 
comrades  who  fell  for  their  country  —  and  rose 
again. 

To  one  with  imagination  and  leisure  these 
moss-grown  stones  have  a  tale  to  be  read. 
Yonder  slanting  slab  has  a  pathetic  pair  of 
hands  in  rude  bas-relief,  and  tells  us  that  here 
lies  Mary  Jane,  aged  forty,  the  third  wife  of 
Reuben  —  and  all  else  is  obliterated  by  the 
finger  of  time! 

The  Cape-Codders  have  builded  well:  their 
homes  and  public  buildings  follow  lines  of 
dignity  and  comfort;  the  windmill  strikes  a 
piquant  note  upon  the  hill.  And  when  one 
stands  upon  their  final  resting-place,  —  often 
by  the  slope  of  a  willow-fringed  pool,  slumber- 
ing, too,  amid  the  late  afternoon  shadows  or  in 
sight  of  the  unforgettable  beach  with  its  silver 
expanse  glittering  for  a  mile  and  a  half  at  low 
tide,  —  one  feels  that  their  selection  of  a  last 
habitation  was  the  best  of  all. 


Chapter  VIII 


ORLEANS 

THE  early  settlers  loved  to  give  the  names 
of  their  home  villages  in  Devon,  Kent, 
and  Cornwall  to  the  villages  which  they  hewed 
out  in  the  New  World,  and  thus  we  have  the 
familiar  English  titles  dotting  every  corner 
and  crevice  of  the  Cape.  But  Orleans,  al- 
though originally  part  of  Nauset,  or  Eastham, 
being  the  terminus  of  the  French  Atlantic 
Cable  from  Brest,  caught  a  lasting  reminder  of 
its  Gallic  affiliations  in  the  name  it  took  at  its 
incorporation  in  1797,  and  remains  the  unique 
example  of  a  foreign  title  among  the  Cape  Cod 
towns. 


'jm.  -C^;PE  C;pD  NEW  AND  OLD 

To  the  passing  automobilist  Orleans  may 
seem  rather  less  interesting  than  some  of  its 
neighbors,  but  that  is  because  he  is  looking  at 
mere  topography.  A  glance  at  the  vital  his- 
tory of  this  town  reveals  incidents,  imagina- 
tion, and  quite  an  amazing  amount  of  spirit 
of  a  lively  sort.  It  was  Orleans  which,  when 
an  offer  of  indemnity  from  destruction  for 
consideration  of  a  tribute  was  made  by  the 
English  fleet,  as  had  been  done  at  Brewster,^ 
immediately  and  indignantly  rejected  it  and 
successfully  repelled  all  efforts  of  the  enemy 
to  land.  They  displayed  the  same  pluck  when 
a  British  barge  entered  Orleans  Harbor  and 
took  possession  of  the  schooner  Betsy  and  the 
sloops  Camel,  Washington,  and  Nancy.  Two 
of  the  sloops  being  aground  were  set  on  fire 
by  the  enemy,  and  the  fire  was  promptly  and 
triumphantly  extinguished  by  the  inhabi- 
tants. The  British  got  the  Betsy  under  way, 
but  the  midshipman,  being  unacquainted  with 
the  coast,  put  the  only  American  on  board  in 
charge  of  the  vessel  upon  his  promise  to  carry 

1  See  p.  96. 


ORLEANS  103 

it  to  Provincetown.  But  the  canny  Yankee 
ran  it  into  Yarmouth,  where  it  was  recaptured 
by  the  natives  and  the  crew  made  prisoners 
and  sent  to  Salem,  where  they  met  the  course 
of  justice  reserved  for  them.  There  was  even 
a  pitched  battle  in  these  very  streets  of  Or- 
leans, which  are  so  placidly  traversed  to-day, 
resulting  in  the  death  of  several  of  the  enemy 
—  a  fray  which  has  ever  since  been  dignified 
by  the  name  of  "The  Battle  of  Orleans." 

The  town  had  plenty  of  initiative  in  regard 
to  civil  enterprise  as  well.  In  1804  a  canal 
from  Town  Cove  to  Boat  Meadow  River,  nearly 
on  a  boundary  line  between  Orleans  and  East- 
ham,  was  dug  by  a  company  empowered  by  the 
two  towns.  The  Legislature  was  petitioned  for 
authority  to  create  a  lottery  in  aid  of  the  pro- 
ject, which  suggests  that  perhaps  the  French 
idea  had  gone  a  little  deeper  than  merely  the 
name  in  this  town.  However,  the  strict  old 
Puritan  Government  granted  no  such  frivolous 
concessions,  and  either  for  that  or  for  other 
reasons  the  canal  was  never  completed. 

There  is  a  lively  legend  about  this  canal. 


104      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

When  Captain  Southack  sailed  out  to  cap- 
ture the  pirate  Bellamj^  (whose  story  is  given 
in  more  detail  on  page  173),  the  sea,  lashed  by 
the  storm,  forced  a  passage  through  the  Cape 
along  the  very  line  chosen  later  for  the  Orleans 
Canal,  and  the  captain  sailed  with  a  whale- 
boat  through  from  the  Bay  to  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  Those  who  would  cast  a  doubt  on  the 
authenticity  of  this  trip  need  only  confer  with 
any  native  of  Orleans,  man  or  child.  For  every 
one  knows  that  when  a  storm  is  brewing  a 
mirage  is  plainly  visible  in  the  sky.  Then  it 
is  that  we  can  see  again  Captain  Southack's 
whaling-boat  sailing  once  again  across  the 
meadows  of  Orleans,  —  following  the  old  route 
which  legend  grants  him,  from  the  Bay  to  the 
Atlantic  Ocean,  —  and  disappearing  in  pursuit 
of  the  pirate  ship! 

However,  neither  dazzled  nor  discouraged 
by  the  strange  fate  of  her  first  canal,  Orleans 
tried  a  similar  enterprise  again  in  1818.  Being 
largely  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of  salt, 
the  town  united  with  Chatham  in  the  construc- 
tion of  a  canal  through  the  beach,  below  Strong 


ORLEANS  105 

Island,  for  the  benefit  of  the  salt  meadows. 
The  canal  was  cut,  but  the  sand  choked  it  and 
made  the  enterprise  a  failure.  But  though  un- 
fortunate with  its  canals,  Orleans  was  a  flour- 
ishing town,  having  in  1855  four  whaling  ves- 
sels of  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  tons  each, 
employing  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  men  and 
securing  oil  worth  $19,250.  To-day  one  of  its 
most  valuable  industries  is  also  connected  with 
the  water,  but  in  a  more  highly  intensive  fash- 
ion. The  Mayo  Duck  Farm  at  Orleans,  which 
hatches  about  fifty  thousand  ducklings  in  a 
season  and  gives  employment  to  a  score  of  men, 
is  justly  famous. 

But  the  duck  business  which  brings  most 
pleasure,  if  not  most  profit,  in  this  region  is  of 
quite  another  stripe.  Duck  shooting  is  one  of 
the  favorite  Cape  sports,  and  late  into  the  sea- 
son one  hears  the  shots  of  the  gunners  and 
meets  them  in  the  woods,  brown  and  smiling, 
their  booty  slung  across  their  shoulders.  If  you 
can  afford  it,  you  own  your  own  gunning-stand, 
either  by  a  pond  or  by  the  ocean.  If  you  can- 
not own,  you  may  hire.    These  stands  are 


106      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

merely  low  shanties,  covered  with  a  thatch 
that  makes  them  practically  invisible.  The 
French  and  English  soldiers  could  teach  no 
camouflage  of  this  sort  to  a  genuine  Cape  Cod 
duck  hunter.  Before  the  shanties  are  teth- 
ered live  decoy  ducks.  A  drake  is  also  tethered 
a  short  distance  in  front,  so  as  to  keep  the 
ducks  alert.  One  man  in  the  shanty  keeps 
watch:  when  he  sees  a  flock  of  ducks  in  the 
distance  he  immediately  sends  out  two  or  three 
live  decoys,  who  fly  out  in  front  of  the  stand, 
quacking  loudly.  The  wild  ducks  hear  the 
sound,  and  swing  in  close  to  the  beach.  The 
live  decoy  ducks  immediately  come  back  to 
their  place  as  they  have  been  taught  to  do,  and 
the  gunners  line  up  behind  their  barrier.  At  a 
signal  given  by  one  of  them,  they  rise  up,  and 
all  shoot  at  once  —  often  killing  a  whole  flock 
of  as  many  as  fifteen  or  twenty  at  once. 

The  same  method  is  followed  in  gunning  for 
whistlers,  coot,  geese,  and  sheldrake.  It  is 
difficult  for  any  one  who  is  not  under  the  fas- 
cination of  the  game  to  see  anything  but  gross 
slaughter  in  this  kind  of  shooting,  and  the  law 


ORLEANS  107 

which  limits  fifteen  ducks  to  a  man  seems  very 
necessary.  The  law  which  prohibits  the  shoot- 
ing of  any  ducks  before  sunrise  or  after  sun- 
down has  helped  save  many  of  the  wild  fowl 
along  these  shores,  as  their  habit  is  to  come 
close  to  the  shallow  places  along  the  shore  to 
find  food. 

An  experienced  gunner  will  sometimes  pre- 
fer a  more  difficult  and  more  sportsmanlike 
method  of  getting  his  birds.  After  building 
up  a  temporary  blind  of  seaweed,  and  setting 
out  a  few  wooden  decoys,  —  possibly  keeping 
a  duck  and  a  drake  in  the  pen  with  him,  — 
he  will  await  the  coming  of  the  wild  birds  and 
shoot  them  on  the  wing,  getting  less  game,  but 
more  excitement. 

Few  of  the  twentieth-century  folk  who  fly 
through  Orleans  by  train  or  in  an  automobile 
realize  how  comparatively  short  is  time  when 
there  was  not  only  no  railroad,  but  hardly 
even  a  road  of  any  kind  in  this  region.  Of 
course,  the  first  roads  here,  as  everywhere  in 
the  colonies,  were  Indian  trails,  which  were 
gradually  widened.   Horses  were  used,  but  not 


108      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

carriages.  The  same  state  of  affairs  which  still 
exists  in  primitive  parts  of  the  South  and  West, 
where  a  wheel  rut  is  practically  unknown,  — 
all  carting  and  carrying  being  by  mule-pack, 
—  was  the  universal  condition.  Carriages  first 
made  their  appearance  in  the  cities.  How 
many  people  realize  that  it  was  not  until  1687 
that  the  first  horse  coaches  appeared  in  Bos- 
ton; that  there  were  no  carriages  in  Connecti- 
cut until  1756;  that  in  1768  there  were  only 
twenty-two  privately  owned  wheeled  vehicles 
in  Boston;  only  145  in  1798.  And  that  there 
were  only  a  dozen  or  so  private  coaches  in  the 
combined  cities  of  Boston,  New  York,  and 
Philadelphia  before  1700.^  This  was  due  to  the 
poor  roads  and  lack  of  bridges.  Obviously 
pleasure  driving,  or  even  driving  for  business, 
labored  under  a  sobering  handicap  when  a 
coach,  coming  to  a  stream  too  deep  to  be 
forded,  was  stood  up  in  two  parallel  canoes  and 
thus  conveyed  across  while  the  horses  swam! 
Naturally,  with  this  state  of  affairs  as  to 
roads,  the  waterways  were  very  popular,  es- 
pecially in  country  districts.  They  were  con- 


ORLEANS  109 

tinually  used:  in  summer  by  boat,  and  in 
winter  by  sleds  and  carrioles  which  were  drawn 
over  the  frozen  surface  by  horses  and  dogs. 
Later  came  ox-carts  —  picturesque  vehicles 
which  most  people  do  not  associate  with  New 
England  scenes. 

Down  on  the  Cape,  even  when  roads  were 
widened  and  improved  and  bridges  were  built, 
the  easiest  way  of  communication  continued 
to  be  by  water  instead  of  by  land.  For  months 
at  a  time  the  roads  were  rivers  of  mud  or  drifts 
of  snow,  and  it  was  no  uncommon  thing  for  a 
wagon  to  become  so  embedded  in  a  muddy  rut 
that  the  driver  would  leave  it  where  it  stuck 
and  wait  for  spring,  when  he  would  return  and 
dig  it  out.  When  the  corduroy  roads  were 
built,  they  soon  became  so  rough  that  wagons 
were  literally  shaken  to  pieces  in  traveling  on 
them.  It  is  quite  understandable  that  a  man 
might  prefer  to  get  caught  in  the  mud,  from 
whence  he  had  a  reasonable  hope  of  ultimately 
extracting  his  wagon,  than  to  see  it  knocked 
into  uncollectible  fragments  by  the  jolting  of 
the  corduroy  road. 


110      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Of  course  this  state  of  affairs  was  soonest 
mended  in  the  cities  and  latest  in  the  country 
districts,  and  on  the  Cape,  even  after  roads 
became  very  fair,  water  travel  was  preferred 
to  that  by  land.  This  was  how  the  sailing- 
packet  lines  came  to  be  so  firmly  established. 
From  almost  every  village  on  the  inside  shore 
of  the  Cape,  one  or  more  of  these  lines  was 
maintained,  and  passengers  and  merchandise 
were  conveyed  by  them  once  or  twice  a  week 
to  and  from  Boston.  The  usual  custom  was  to 
notify  the  South  Shore  dwellers  of  the  arrival 
and  departure  of  these  vessels  by  very  simple 
means  —  namely,  of  signals  hoisted  on  some 
eminence,  discernible  to  these  villages !  These 
packets  were  roomy  and  sociable,  and  seem 
the  legitimate  background  for  the  tales  that 
come  down  to  us  of  jolly  trips  and  frequent 
trials  of  skill  and  speed  between  rival  lines, 
sometimes  accompanied  by  modest  betting  on 
the  part  of  the  champions  of  different  vessels. 
Now  Provincetown  is  the  only  Cape  town 
which  communicates  regularly  by  steamer  with 
Boston.    The  old  stage-coach  was  almost  as 


ORLEANS  111 

romantic  a  feature  as  the  packet,  although 
it  grew  in  favor  more  slowly.  The  transition 
between  private  and  public  conveyance  was 
very  gradual.  First  a  horse  was  borrowed,  and 
then  a  chaise.  Then  both  horse  and  chaise. 
Then,  to  meet  a  growing  demand,  a  horse  and 
chaise  were  kept  to  be  let.  Finally  a  driver 
was  added,  and  the  age  of  the  stage-coach 
commenced. 

At  this  time  it  was  an  all-day  journey  from 
Boston  to  the  Cape;  a  trip  wearisome  and  in- 
convenient according  to  modern  standards, 
but  not  without  its  charm  when  viewed  in  the 
light  of  retrospect.  Those  early  days  recall  the 
stories  of  Balzac  and  De  Maupassant,  in  which 
the  stage-coach  furnishes  scene  and  actors  for 
tragedy  and  comedy,  A  traveler  had  to  start 
at  early  dawn  and  take  his  place  in  the  coach 
in  intimate  proximity  with  all  sorts  and  con- 
ditions of  fellow-passengers.  The  numerous 
stopping-places  along  the  route  gave  ample 
opportunity  for  the  exchange  of  new  opinions 
and  good  cheer  at  the  various  taverns.  They 
had    no    hotels    or    inns    then:    Cornish's   at 


112      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

South  Plymouth,  Swift's  at  West  Sandwich, 
Fessenden's  at  Sandwich,  Rowland's  at  West 
Barnstable,  marked  the  route.  The  roads  were 
rough,  the  springs  not  of  the  finest,  and  if  all 
hands  had  to  turn  out  now  and  then  to  help 
hoist  the  wagon  out  of  a  sandpit  or  quagmire 
—  well,  it  was  all  part  of  the  trip.  A  journey 
to  Boston  was  the  event  of  the  year,  sometimes 
of  a  lifetime.  When  the  coaches  began  to  run 
more  and  more  frequently,  and  finally  brought 
mail  from  Boston  every  day  instead  of  an 
irregular  once  or  twice  a  week,  people  felt  that 
the  millennium  had  come.  But  as  the  packet 
was  forced  to  the  wall  by  the  steamboat,  so  in 
due  time  the  stage-coach,  outsped  by  the 
steam-engine,  rumbled  forever  out  of  sight. 

In  1847  the  railroad,  under  the  name  of  the 
Cape  Cod  Branch  Railroad  (which  was  part 
of  the  Old  Colony),  began  to  poke  its  nose 
down  on  the  Cape  —  first  as  far  as  Sandwich, 
and  then,  ten  years  later,  on  to  Barnstable 
and  Yarmouth.  The  name  was  changed  to  the 
Cape  Cod  Railroad  in  1854  and  the  same  year 
the  road  was  extended  to  Hyannis.    Twelve 


ORLEANS  113 

years  later  a  sale  of  the  Cape  Cod  Central  to 
the  Cape  Cod  Railroad  was  made,  and  the  line 
pushed  from  Yarmouth  to  Orleans.  Then  from 
Wellfleet  to  Provincetown,  while  branches 
were  added  from  Buzzard's  Bay  to  Wood's 
Hole  and  from  Harwich  to  Chatham.  It  was 
a  slow  development,  however,  and  the  first 
trains  that  arrived  at  the  newly  constructed 
railroad  stations  in  the  various  villages  pulled 
cars  hardly  larger  than  the  stage-coaches 
which  they  were  destined  to  banish.  There 
are  plenty  of  people  alive  to-day  up  and  down 
the  Cape  who  can  tell  you  of  the  first  train  that 
arrived  in  their  village,  and  the  sensation  it 
produced.  They  were  primitive  enough  — 
these  conveyances.  It  was  not  until  1889  that 
steam  was  used  to  heat  the  cars,  and  their 
journey  through  the  scrub  oak  and  blueberry- 
patches  and  backyards,  and  their  advent  in 
and  departure  from  the  small  stations,  had  the 
pleasant  intimacy  bred  of  smallness  and  a  cer- 
tain picturesqueness  which  we  no  longer  as- 
sociate with  steam  coaches. 

One  of  the  most  revolutionary  effects  of  the 


114   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

railroad  was  felt  in  the  postal  service.  Origi- 
nally the  pockets  of  chance  travelers  were  the 
only  channels  of  transporting  letters.  When 
the  stage-coach  came  in,  mails  were  brought 
more  frequently,  with  a  great  clatter  and  hul- 
labaloo and  snapping  of  whips  as  in  old  Eng- 
lish days.  But  even  then  many  of  the  villages 
were  only  visited  occasionally.  In  1794  there 
was  no  post-office  below  Yarmouth,  and  the 
mail  for  the  lower  Cape  was  sent  and  received 
once  a  week.  When  John  Thatcher  contracted 
to  carry  it  for  a  dollar  a  day,  and  was  appointed 
to  do  so,  the  thrifty  folk  of  Yarmouth,  though 
doubtless  glad  to  receive  their  letters  regularly, 
nevertheless  insisted  upon  styling  the  inno- 
vation a  tremendous  extravagance  of  the  ad- 
ministration. 

But  soon  after  the  opening  of  the  railroad 
mail  was  sent  and  received  twice  a  day  in  quite 
a  matter-of-fact  fashion.  Later  two  telegraph 
lines  were  constructed  on  the  Cape,  and  the 
first  telephone  was  installed.  Thus  the  Cape 
was  caught  in  a  net  of  steel  and  iron  progress, 
never  to  be  released,  and  the  days  of  John 


ORLEANS  115 

Thatcher  seemed  as  ancient  history  as  were 
those  of  Greece.  Now  the  speeding  trains  wave 
perpetual  banners  of  smoke  from  Boston  to 
the  innermost  points  of  the  Cape,  and  auto- 
mobiles glint  and  flash  over  the  flawless  high- 
ways in  such  numbers  that  traffic  policemen 
—  many  of  them  bronzed  old  sea  captains  — 
are  stationed  at  the  road  corners  and  at 
bridges.  There  is  only  one  Cape  Cod  town 
without  its  railroad  station  to-day,  and  that 
is  Mashpee,^  and  the  telegraph  and  telephone 
wires  lace  hilltop  to  hilltop  across  all  Barn- 
stable County.^ 

1  See  chap.  xvii. 

2  There  are  many  "  Telegraph  Hills "  throughout  the 
length  of  the  Cape,  dating  from  the  time  of  the  Revolution 
and  the  War  of  1812,  when  wigwag  signals  were  given  from 
one  hilltop  to  another.  Beginning  with  the  extreme  end  of  the 
Cape,  these  hills  occur  quite  frequently  (many  of  them  still 
keeping  their  old  names),  the  last  one  being  Blue  Hill,  Milton. 


Chapter  IX 

EASTHAM  AND  THE  AGRICULTURAL 
FUTURE  OF  THE  CAPE 

IT  was  once  the  granary  of  the  Cape  —  this 
barren,  windswept  region,  with  the  dying 
sunHght  slanting  across  its  roUing  fields.  Long, 
low  marshes,  level  and  softly  tinted,  like  deli- 
cate pastels,  contribute  now  to  the  sad  and 
lovely  scene  —  quite  different  in  its  wistful 
charm  from  the  other  towns  about  it.  Its  soli- 
tary roads,  leading  off  from  the  state  highway 
to  remote  houses,  are  wanly  mysterious.  Its 
desolation  is  not  unattractive.  But  its  beauty 
—  for  it  has  an  unmistakable  beauty  of  an 
unearthly  quality  —  is  such  as  to  appeal  to  the 
eye  of  the  artist  rather  than  to  that  of  the 
farmer. 


lJLj':: \  -rtyf.vv:^..--:^,^:^^  --^W^ 


EASTHAM  117 

"  My  Love  lies  in  the  gates  of  foam, 
The  last  dear  wreck  of  shore: 
The  naked  sea-marsh  binds  her  home, 
The  sand  her  chamber  door." 

It  seems  almost  impossible  to  believe  that 
this  town,  these  gently  rolling  pastures,  so  bare 
to-day  of  anything  except  the  thinnest  hay, 
were  once  luxuriant  with  rich  and  waving 
crops,  and  that  the  Indians  had  so  many  maize 
fields  here,  and  that  the  early  settlers  were  so 
successful  in  their  magnificent  gardens  that 
the  Plymouth  Colony  talked,  at  one  time,  of 
removing  to  Eastham.  For  this  was  the  very- 
region  which  was  at  one  time  the  granary  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  and  Plymouth. 

What  happened,  and  why?  The  lesson  of 
Eastham  is  the  lesson  of  all  Cape  Cod,  and,  in 
a  small  degree,  a  warning  for  all  the  United 
States.  The  fertile  soil  was  forced  to  bring 
forth  crop  after  crop:  all  the  good  was  ex- 
tracted and  none  returned,  and  in  course  of 
time  it  became  utterly  exhausted.  To-day  it 
lies,  like  a  beautiful  and  weary  woman  whose 
life  force  has  ebbed  away  almost  to  the  last 


118      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

breath.  Cape  Cod  is  usually  considered  —  by 
the  casual  outside  world  —  as  a  mere  sandpit 
on  which  nothing  grows  but  a  few  huckleberry 
bushes.  The  Cape  Cod  farmers,  too,  after 
they  had  raised  heavy  crops  year  after  year 
without  making  the  smallest  return  to  the 
soil,  finding  that  the  meadows  which  used  to 
grow  hay  twelve  feet  high  now  produced  a 
scanty  three-foot  specimen,  began  to  revile 
the  "  sand  "  and  to  move  away  in  high  dudgeon. 
The  trouble  with  Cape  Cod,  from  an  agri- 
cultural standpoint,  is  far  less  the  infertility  of 
the  soil  than  the  ignorance  or  laziness  of  the 
farmer.  Every  region  has  its  soil  peculiari- 
ties, but  the  wise  farmer  is  the  one  who  ex- 
ploits these  peculiarities  to  the  limit,  rather 
than  he  who  flees  in  the  face  of  the  difficulties 
they  present.  Clever  as  the  Cape-Codder  was 
in  fishing  a  fat  living  from  the  sea,  it  is  only 
recently  that  it  has  occurred  to  him  that  he 
had  an  equal  opportunity  on  land,  although, 
to  be  sure,  sheep-raising  reached  quite  a  height 
about  1820.  Now  there  are  signs  that  he  is 
bestirring    himself    and    learning    something 


EASTHAM  119 

about  modern  farming,  and  that  the  younger 
generation,  instead  of  flocking  off  to  Fall  River 
and  New  Bedford,  as  Sicilian  folk  flock  to 
America,  are  attending  agricultural  colleges, 
taking  special  correspondence  courses,  or 
starting  in  with  some  practical  line  of  fruit- 
growing or  poultry-raising. 

Here  at  Eastham,  for  instance,  they  have 
discovered  that  the  soil,  when  dressed  with 
seaweed  and  shells,  —  an  inexpensive  and 
accessible  fertilizer,  —  grows  asparagus  ex- 
traordinarily well,  and  recently  this  town  alone 
sold  forty  thousand  dollars'  worth  in  one  sea- 
son. Farms  of  from  five  to  fifteen  acres  are 
being  pressed  into  service,  and  although  there 
is  a  possibility  that  the  same  lack  of  crop  rota- 
tion which  was  so  disastrous  in  Eastham's  early 
days  may  again  work  its  invidious  mischief, 
as  yet  the  asparagus  crop  is  abundant  and  of 
a  high  order  of  excellence.  Turnips,  too,  are 
raised  in  large  quantities,  and  the  strawberry 
flourishes  like  the  green  bay  tree.  It  is,  how- 
ever, at  Falmouth  that  this  latter  industry 
has  reached  its  highest  point,  two  thousand 


1^0      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

dollars'  worth  being  shipped  from  Falmouth 
alone  in  the  year  1916.  Indeed,  the  strawberry 
market  has  been  glutted  several  seasons  lately, 
and  the  Portuguese,  who  are  indefatigable 
workers  if  not  scientific  ones,  have  fared  ill  with 
their  returns. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Cape  —  the  wind- 
swept, sandy  Cape  —  has  some  decided  ad- 
vantages which  can,  if  realized,  give  it  a  very 
respectable  place  in  the  agricultural  world. 
Such  institutions  as  the  Cape  Cod  Farm  Bur- 
eau ^  are  trying  to  prove  to  the  native  popu- 
lation, and  to  outsiders  seeking  a  new  and 
permanent  home,  that  the  Cape  is  not  all  sand 
by  any  means;  that  it  varies  from  a  heavy  clay 
to  pure  sand,  with  a  sandy  loam  predominat- 
ing, which  is  especially  suited  for  the  growing 
of  small  fruits,  asparagus,  and  vegetables. 
There  need  be  no  difficulty  from  lack  of  mois- 
ture if  cultivation  is  faithfully  practiced.  The 
long  growing  season,  with  the  comparatively 
mild  open  winter,  offers  an  exceptional  op- 
portunity to  the  poultry-raiser  as  well  as  to 
*  See  chap.  ni. 


EASTHAM  121 

the  general  farmer  and  fruit-grower.  The 
steady  increase  of  summer  visitors  ^  offers  a 
splendid  outlet  for  first-quality  produce,  while 
the  excellent  state  roads  and  frequent  and 
swift  train  service  to  Boston  ^  reduce  the  prob- 
lem of  distribution  to  the  minimum.  It  is  true 
that  Cape  Cod  does  not  feed  herself  in  any 
month  of  the  year;  that  potatoes,  apples,  eggs, 
meat,  and  vegetables  are  shipped  down  from 
Boston  constantly;  that  hundreds  of  farmers' 
households  still  patronize  the  condensed-milk 
can  in  lieu  of  a  cow.  But  it  is  also  true  that 
Cape  Cod  is  improving;  that  although  there 
is  still  lack  of  tools,  lack  of  knowledge,  lack  of 
cooperation,  lack  of  capital,  nevertheless, 
small  fruits  are  being  grown  profitably  at 
Truro;  good  hay  —  a  rarity  on  the  Cape  —  is 
being  raised  at  East  Barnstable;  the  Portu- 
guese have,  in  some  districts,  banded  them- 
selves together  into  selling  organizations;  more 
than  one  farmer  clears  a  thousand  dollars  a 
year  on  the  side  issue  of  hens  and  chickens,  and 
asparagus  and  strawberries  have  become  regu- 

1  See  chap.  vi.  '  See  chap.  vui. 


122      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

lar  industries  of  no  inconsiderable  proportions. 
Fancy  farming  is  becoming  popular,  too,  as  is 
shown  by  the  Bay  End  Farm  at  the  head  of  the 
Bay,  where  four  tractor  engines  have  been  at 
work  clearing  the  woodland,  and  where  the 
friendly  mistress  frequently  and  freely  opens 
her  grounds  for  fetes  and  holiday  celebration. 
At  Hatchville  a  new  stock  farm  along  generous 
lines  is  gathering  impetus,  and  serving  as  a 
stimulating  example  to  all  the  countryside. 
Thus  the  signs  point  to  more  progressive  days 
on  the  Cape  along  lines  which  have  not  been 
considered  —  until  recently  —  as  especially 
suited  to  this  region.  Perhaps  there  is  poetical 
justice  in  Eastham  —  which  was  originally  so 
fertile  and  then  so  despoiled  —  again  coming 
to  the  fore  through  the  prominence  of  her 
asparagus  culture. 

Besides  serving  as  a  warning  and  a  hopeful 
example,  Eastham  has  had  her  own  private 
history,  which,  when  read  in  the  light  of  these 
stirring  later  days,  seems  rather  pathetic:  she 
has  come  out  at  the  small  end  of  the  horn  so 
many    times.     The    famous    Camp-Meeting 


EASTHAM  US 

Grounds  were  originally  here,  and  a  matter  of 
pride,  but  they  were  soon  removed  to  Falmouth 
so  as  to  be  more  accessible.  The  terminus  of 
the  French  Atlantic  Cable  was  also  originally 
placed  at  North  Eastham  in  1879,  amid  a  very  . 
gratifying  provincial  stir,  but  was  afterwards 
picked  up  and  removed  to  Orleans.  And  finally 
much  of  the  land  which  belonged  to  Eastham 
was  ignominiously  chopped  off  and  handed 
over  to  this  same  sister  town  —  humiliations 
which  Eastham  has  endured  very  patiently. 

Eastham,  which  was  first  called  Nauset,  was 
settled  in  1646,  only  seven  years  after  the  three 
pioneer  towns  of  Sandwich,  Barnstable,  and 
Yarmouth,  and  like  these  towns  she  had  her 
ups  and  downs,  doing  very  creditably  with  her 
fishing,  until  all  maritime  activities  were  rudely 
cut  off  by  the  Revolution.  After  the  war  whal- 
ing was  again  restored  and  a  tide  of  prosperity 
set  in.  Salt-works  were  established,  and  in  due 
time  the  town  was  able  to  afford  the  luxury  of  a 
pulpit  cushion  and  a  singing-school.  The  same 
spirit  of  fair  play,  which  in  1670  prompted 
Cape  Cod  to  establish  the  first  public  schools 


124      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

in  this  country  and  to  maintain  them  with  the 
fisheries  tax,  was  evident  in  Eastham,  which, 
a  few  years  previously,  had  made  a  provision 
that  part  of  every  whale  cast  on  the  shore 
should  be  appropriated  for  the  use  of  the  minis- 
ter. It  was  not  a  bad  idea,  and  perhaps  the 
same  policy,  if  followed  to-day,  might  tend  to 
mitigate  some  of  the  unworthy  disputes  con- 
cerning our  financial  treatment  of  the  clergy. 
It  is,  however,  less  from  her  historical  than 
her  topographical  aspect  that  Eastham  main- 
tains her  unique  place  in  the  interest  of  the  ail- 
too  casual  passer-by.  There  is  continual 
change,  perpetual  fluctuation  along  her  coast- 
line, where  the  forest-bearing  bluffs  may  be 
often  seen,  eaten  away,  with  their  trees  lying 
along  the  beach,  uptorn  roots  exposed  to  the 
air;  and  where,  on  the  other  hand,  a  storm  will 
sometimes  make  a  beach  by  throwing  up 
thousands  of  tons  of  sand  on  a  low  stretch  of 
coast  and  burying  the  marsh-bank  completely 
out  of  sight.  Large  stumps  are  frequently  dis- 
covered a  mile  out  from  the  land,  and  ancient 
peat  meadows  lie  under  the  water  in  more  than 


EASTHAM 


125 


one  place.  There  is  even  one  peat  meadow  in 
the  town  which  has  experienced  the  changes  of 
being  buried  by  the  sand,  then  being  washed 
out  again  by  the  waves,  and  finally  being  re- 
stored to  its  original  state  and  having  fuel 
taken  from  it. 

It  is  probably  this  aspect  of  Eastham,  so 
different  from  some  of  the  other  more  stable 
communities  of  Barnstable  County,  with  its 
pastel  tints  and  long,  low  marshes,  with  its 
inlets  and  bays  in  which  seaweeds,  delicate 
and  many  colored,  float,  making  pictures 
hardly  less  frail  and  transient  than  those  pic- 
tures of  another  age  and  time  which  the  his- 
torian tries  to  grasp  —  it  is  probably  this 
aspect  of  Eastham,  pensive  and  beautiful, 
which  the  stranger  will  longest  remember. 


Chapter  X 
WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING 

THE  popular  food  of  any  country  offers  a 
significant  index  to  that  country's  tem- 
perament. Can  we  think  of  Germany  without 
beer,  or  England  without  roast  beef,  or  France 
without  salads,  or  Cape  Cod  without  fish?  The 
term  of  "Codfish  Aristocracy"  —  although  it 
originated  with  the  Dutch  in  1347,  the  rival 
parties  being  called  hooks  and  codfish  —  is 
excellently  applicable  here.  It  has  frequently 
been  afiirmed  that  a  Briton  would  starve  on  the 
fish  which  sustains  a  good  Cape-Codder.  Cer- 
tain it  is  that,  while  in  Roman  Catholic  coun- 
tries the  fish  supply  is  sometimes  exhausted 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    127 

by  the  end  of  Lent,  this  is  a  state  of  affairs 
never  dupHcated  in  Barnstable  County.  The 
fish  dinner  is  a  weekly  rite  throughout  the  year, 
and  has  been  ever  since  the  time  when  Bradford 
received  a  Jesuit  priest  at  his  table  and  offered 
him  fish  because  it  happened  to  be  Friday  — 
a  courtesy  that  one  might  not  have  been  led  to 
expect  from  that  uncompromising  old  Puritan. 
But  in  spite  of  the  reputation  of  the  Cape 
there  are  plenty  of  villages  in  it  where  you  can- 
not find  a  clam  chowder  or  buy  a  fresh  mack- 
erel. Whatever  sea  food  is  caught  is  sent 
direct  to  Boston :  the  natives  are  so  busy  play- 
ing skipper  or  chauffeur  or  gardener  to  the 
summer  folk  that  they  have  no  time  for  humbler 
occupations.  But  at  Wellfleet  you  are  pretty 
sure  to  fare  well  in  regard  to  ocean  products. 
Whether  you  wish  to  delve  back  into  history 
and  see  how  this  town  ranked  among  the 
other  fishing  towns,  or  whether  you  wish  to 
taste  the  delicacy  of  a  quahaug  pie;  or  whether 
you  merely  want  to  take  a  rod  and  reel  and  go 
fishing  yourself  —  your  desires  can  be  easily 
and  happily  met. 


128   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

The  fishing  industry  of  the  Cape  was  the 
first  of  all  its  industries.  As  early  as  1659  we 
find  the  Commissioners  of  the  Colonies  recom- 
mending to  the  General  Court  that  they  "regu- 
late the  taking  of  mackerel,  since  fish  was  the 
most  staple  commodity  of  the  county."  Fisher- 
ies for  both  cod  and  mackerel  were  of  the  first 
importance,  and  even  at  that  early  date  it  was 
considered  advisable  to  tax  strangers  who  came 
to  the  Cape  to  fish. 

Wellfleet  had  her  hundred  vessels  at  the 
Banks  in  those  days,  and  led  so  triumphantly 
in  the  whaling  era  that  her  name  was  originally 
"Whalefleet."  Her  whaling  schooners  were 
built  in  her  own  yards  from  her  own  timber. 
This  whaling  business  was  entirely  different 
from  Bank  fishing.  At  first  only  the  whales 
that  happened  to  pass  near  shore  were  caught. 
Station  houses  were  erected  to  watch  for  them. 
When  they  were  sighted,  vessels,  always  kept 
in  readiness,  dashed  out  after  them.  But  by 
and  by  the  whales  grew  wary.  They  avoided 
the  shore  and  the  whole  Cape  region.  And  then 
whaling  parties,  with  provisions  and  harpoons 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    129 

and  various  implements  of  destruction  suflS- 
cient  to  last  for  months,  went  after  them. 
These  parties  pursued  their  game  out  to  the 
Falkland  Islands;  to  Guinea  and  Brazil,  and 
Africa  and  Hudson  Bay.  Jesse  Holbrook,  of 
Wellfleet,  killed  in  Revolutionary  times  fifty- 
two  sperm  whales  in  one  voyage,  which  exploit 
won  for  him  such  fame  that  he  was  afterward 
engaged  by  a  London  firm  for  twelve  years  to 
teach  their  employees  this  curious  art.  After 
a  checkered  career  he  returned  to  Wellfleet  in 
1795  —  perhaps  one  of  the  most  unique  vete- 
rans of  any  warfare  mentioned  in  the  annals  of 
Cape  Cod  warfare.  Those  to  whom  the  word 
"whaling"  brings  up  only  a  vague  picture,  may 
form  some  idea  of  its  value  by  this.  In  1843  a 
whale  was  captured  near  the  end  of  the  Cape 
by  Captain  Ebenezer  Cook,  and  estimated  to 
contain  two  hundred  barrels  of  oil  and  two 
thousand  pounds  of  bone.  Not  having  proper 
facilities  for  handling  this  mammoth  find,  only 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  barrels  of  oil 
were  saved  and  three  hundred  pounds  of  bone. 
Even  with  this  waste  the  whale  was  worth 


130      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

ten  thousand  dollars  —  and  this  in  the  days 
when  ten  thousand  dollars  was  a  fortune.  Cot- 
ton Mather,  writing  on  this  subject  in  1697, 
describes  a  cow  and  calf  recently  caught  in  this 
vicinity:  "The  cow  was  fifty-five  feet  long;  the 
bone  was  nine  or  ten  inches  wide;  a  cart  upon 
wheels  might  have  gone  into  the  mouth  of  it. 
The  calf  was  twenty  feet  long,  for  unto  such 
vast  calves  the  sea-monsters  draw  forth  their 
breasts.  But  so  does  the  good  God  give  the 
people  to  suck  the  sea." 

There  were  regular  whaleboat  fleets,  and 
during  King  William's  War,  which  raged  al- 
most uninterruptedly  from  1699  to  1703,  when- 
ever expeditions  were  sent  out  against  the 
enemy,  whaleboat  fleets  always  accompanied 
them.  These  craft  were  necessarily  small,  be- 
cause the  enemy's  ports  were  usually  located 
near  the  heads  of  rivers  beyond  the  tidewaters, 
where  ordinary  transports  could  not  reach 
them.  They  were  manned  by  whalemen,  sail- 
ors, and  friendly  Indians.  Upon  the  wale  of 
each  boat  strong  pieces  of  leather  were  fast- 
ened, so  that  whenever  they  grounded  the  men 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    131 

could  step  overboard,  slip  long  bars  through 
the  leather  buoys  and  take  up  the  boats,  and 
carry  them  to  deeper  waters.  At  night  or  in 
stormy  weather,  the  boats  were  taken  on  shore, 
turned  over,  and  used  instead  of  shelter  tents. 
Each  boat  was  fitted  with  a  brass  kettle  and 
other  conveniences  for  cooking. 

But  the  turn  of  the  wheel  which  brought 
wealth  to  Pennsylvania  took  it  away  from 
Massachusetts.  There  is  a  story  that  some  old 
sailors  who  had  heard  of  the  discovery  of  an 
oil  well  in  Pennsylvania  went  off,  determined 
to  bring  back  enough  whale  oil  to  knock  the 
new-fangled  product  out  of  business.  They 
hunted  whales  right  vigorously,  and  came  back 
at  the  end  of  three  years  with  a  heavy  cargo 
of  treasure.  But  by  that  time  the  mysterious 
petroleum  was  gushing  up  everywhere  and  the 
whale  oil  was  practically  unmarketable. 

They  also  tell  the  story  of  another  crew  who 
departed  for  whale  oil  and  were  gone  two  years. 
On  their  return  they  were  greeted  with  the 
eager  inquiry:  "Well,  how  many  whales  did 
you  get?"    "We  didn't  see  a  single  whale," 


132   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

was  the  cheerful  response,   *'but  we  had  a 
damned  fine  sail." 

It  is  impossible  to  stem  the  tide  of  progress. 
With  the  opening  of  the  oil  wells,  the  whaling 
business  received  its  death-blow.  The  Rev- 
olutionary War,  the  invention  of  iron  steam- 
ships, and  the  development  of  the  railroad  ^ 
diverted  capital.  It  is  interesting  to  note  here 
that  the  Great  War  has  brought  a  sudden 
impetus  back  to  this  ancient  industry.  In  cer- 
tain bearings  of  the  engines  on  the  modern 
battleship  it  has  been  found  that  "case  oil" 
—  a  lubricant  which  does  not  disintegrate 
under  great  heat  or  pressure  —  is  absolutely 
necessary.  This  case  oil  is  found  in  the  head 
of  the  sperm  whale  and  is  found  here  only.  To 
procure  it  whaling  vessels  have  again  been 
fitted  up,  mariners  procured,  and  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1917  the  brig  Viola  returned  to  New 
Bedford  with  twelve  hundred  and  fifty  bar- 
rels of  sperm  oil  and  a  hundred  and  twenty-one 
pounds  of  ambergris,  valued  at  about  seventy- 
five  thousand  dollars.   However,  even  this  re- 

1  See  chap.  viii. 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    133 

vival  is  hardly  enough  to  affect  the  Cape  as  a 
whole.  It  must  be  admitted  that  the  maritime 
interests  of  Barnstable  County  have  gone  to 
pieces,  and  from  ports  like  Wellfleet,  out  of 
which  a  hundred  vessels  once  sailed,  now  only 
glance  the  white  wings  of  pleasure  catboats 
or  the  occasional  sparkle  of  oars  in  an  old 
dory.  And  this,  from  the  town  which,  early  in 
the  Revolution,  petitioned  for  an  abatement  of 
her  war  tax,  stating  that  her  whale  fishery,  by 
which  nine  tenths  of  her  people  lived,  was 
entirely  cut  off  by  British  gunboats,  and  that 
the  shellfish  industries,  on  which  the  remain- 
ing tenth  depended,  were  equally  at  a  stand- 
still. In  this  distress,  as  later  in  the  Civil  War, 
the  sailors  took  to  privateering  and  made  a 
memorable  record. 

The  days  have  passed  when  such  a  fare  of 
codfish  could  be  got  as  the  one  brought  in  by 
William  McKay  in  1882,  consisting  of  4062 
quintals,  worth  twenty-two  thousand  dollars. 
The  great  blackfish  chase  of  1884  when  fifteen 
hundred  were  driven  down  from  Provincetown 
to  Dennis,  where  they  were  caught,  and  brought 


134      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

in  between  twelve  and  fifteen  thousand  dol- 
lars, is  also  past  and  will  never  be  repeated. 

But  in  spite  of  changed  conditions,  Well- 
fleet  still  boasts  a  goodly  fishing  industry.  Her 
shellfish  are  excellent  and  abundant.  Oysters 
are  shipped  in  large  quantities  to  Boston; 
clams  and  quahaugs,  scallops  and  mussels, 
lobsters  and  crabs  are  all  caught  and  cooked 
in  half  a  hundred  delectable  ways.  The  French 
mussel  is  found  here,  although  it  is  not  popu- 
larly appreciated  as  yet.  There  are  several 
ponds  at  Wellfleet  which  vie  with  the  Bay  in 
yielding  up  delicacies :  pickerel,  white  and  red 
perch,  black  bass  and  landlocked  salmon  and 
blue  fish.  The  summer  people,  of  whom  there 
are  many,  can  tell  one  where  to  go  in  search  of 
such  sport. 

The  cold-storage  plants  for  fish,  which  are 
seen  in  many  places  on  the  Cape,  show  that  the 
industry  is  by  no  means  extinct.  These  are 
usually  owned  by  stock  companies,  and  often 
the  stock  is  owned  by  the  fishermen. 

Cape  Cod  has  been  called  the  dividing  line 
between  the  tropical  seas  and  the  North  At- 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    135 

lantic  seas.  Here  the  Gulf  Stream  strikes  and 
then  flows  toward  the  European  coasts.  Above 
this  line  marine  vegetation  is  of  Arctic  flora, 
distinct  in  many  features  from  that  of  Long 
Island.  In  fact,  the  difference  in  the  flora  of 
Massachusetts  Bay  and  that  of  Buzzard's  Bay 
is  greater  than  that  of  Massachusetts  Bay  and 
the  Bay  of  Fundy,  or  of  Nantucket  and  Nor- 
folk. 

Thus,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  Cape  Cod  has 
lost  much  of  its  prestige  as  a  commercial  fish- 
ing center,  it  still  gives  a  good  deal  of  pleasure 
and  gets  a  great  deal  of  profit  from  its  ocean, 
ponds,  and  streams;  and  those  who  crave  the 
flavor  of  clam  fritters  and  oysters  on  the  half- 
shell  cannot  do  better  than  to  seek  for  them  in 
Wellfleet. 

There  are  interesting  things  above  the  earth 
as  well  as  in  the  waters  under  the  earth  in  this 
town.  The  four  red  crosses  of  a  wireless  sta- 
tion, latticed  against  the  sky  here,  are  visible 
for  miles  around  and  are  quite  as  thrilling,  in 
their  way,  to  the  sociologist,  as  the  tall,  ruined 
arches  of  the  Roman  aqueduct  that  march 


136      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

across  the  sky,  mementos  of  another  great 
civiHzation. 

This  station,  which  is  owned  by  the  Marconi 
Company,  was  estabhshed  in  1903,  and  sends 
out  press  and  long-distance  messages  every 
night,  its  range  being  sixteen  hundred  miles. 
Although  there  are  several  other  wireless  sta- 
tions scattered  along  the  coast  of  Cape  Cod, 
this  was  the  first  high-powered  equipment 
installed  in  this  country,  and  has  transmit- 
ted signals  to  England  which  were  received 
by  Mr.  Marconi  —  rather  impressive  facts 
to  be  associated  with  the  humble  fishing 
hamlet. 

Alongside  this  evidence  of  modernity  there 
are  legends  in  Wellfleet.  Those  who  have  lived 
here  long  will  tell  you,  with  hushed  breath,  of 
the  minister's  deformed  child  who  was  cruelly 
murdered  by  his  father's  own  hand.  On  moon- 
lit nights  the  pathetic,  misshaped  little  ghost 
still  flits  around  the  rosebush  where  the  child 
loved  to  play.  And  if  you  are  searching  for 
ghosts,  be  sure  to  go  down  to  the  beach  where 
Sam  Bellamy's  pirate  ship  was  cast  away. 


WELLFLEET  AND  CAPE  FISHING    137 

There  the  old  buccaneer  still  prowls  about, 
stooping  now  and  then  to  pick  up  the  coins 
flung  him  by  the  skeleton  hands  of  his  drowned 
shipmates. 

Wellfleet  had  its  commercial  enterprises, 
too,  as  had  so  many  of  the  Cape  towns  in  those 
early  days.  In  1815  the  Wellfleet  Manufactur- 
ing Company  was  incorporated  with  a  capital 
of  six  thousand  dollars  for  the  purpose  of  man- 
ufacturing cotton  and  woolen  yarns.  This  was 
the  same  year  that  a  great  gale  swept  over  the 
country  near  Buzzard's  Bay.  With  it  came 
the  highest  tide  ever  known,  exceeding  even  the 
memorable  one  of  1635.  Trees  were  uprooted, 
salt-works  destroyed,  and  vessels  driven  from 
their  moorings  and  landed  on  shore.  Had  the 
tide  risen  higher  it  would  have  inundated  the 
entire  Cape. 

Thus  the  history  of  the  little  town  rounds 
itself  out,  as  does  the  history  of  many  of 
its  neighbors.  Commerce,  success,  disaster, 
change,  progress,  and  fluctuation;  and  then  a 
final  settling  into  a  catering  to  the  summer 
people.  The  four  tall  towers  of  the  wireless, 


138      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

marching  across  the  sky,  are  the  last  touch 
of  the  twentieth  century  upon  the  face  of  the 
little  town  first  settled  as  a  fishing  hamlet  a 
hundred  and  fifty-four  years  ago. 


Chapter  XI 


TRURO 

THERE  is,  perhaps,  no  town  where  the 
pecuhar  formation  of  the  Cape  can  be 
more  clearly  seen  than  at  Truro.  Here,  among 
the  rolling  dunes,  with  houses  tucked  into  the 
hollows  at  their  base,  out  of  reach  of  the  winds, 
and  with  the  winding  roads  recalling  the  old 
days  when  every  wagon  had  an  extra  width  of 
tire  and  axle  so  as  to  get  through  the  heavy 
sand,  one  can  most  easily  trace  the  history  of 
this  curious  topography. 

These  hills,  many  of  them  so  green  that  only 
the  initiated  realize  that  they  are  in  reality 
sand  dunes,  with  opening  vistas  through  which 
one  may  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  sea;  with  paths 
leading  between  them  to  the  solitary  and  dis- 


140      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

tant  houses  of  which  we  may  see  only  a  bit  of 
the  roof;  with  their  httle  gardens  lying  like 
bracelets  around  their  bases;  with  their  stunted 
trees,  and  low  levels  of  red  and  brown,  wind- 
licked  marshes  with  their  inlets  and  creeks; 
and  with  their  churches  placed  high  on  an  oc- 
casional crest,  like  the  little  rocky  chapels  on 
the  Cornish  coast  of  England  —  this  is  Truro! 
This  half-desolate  and  wholly  fascinating 
landscape  is  not  infrequently  described  as 
typical  of  the  whole  Cape.  It  is  not.  Down 
through  Falmouth  and  Sandwich  and  Bourne 
there  are  fertile  farms  and  heavy  forests:  more 
of  both  than  there  were  seventy-five  years  ago. 
The  increase  in  forest  land  on  the  Cape  comes 
about  in  this  way:  When  a  tract  of  land  that 
has  been  tilled  is  abandoned,  —  the  farmer  hav- 
ing died  and  his  sons  having  gone  to  the  city, 
—  it  becomes  covered  by  grass  by  the  end  of 
a  year  or  two.  The  year  after,  miniature  pitch 
pines  have  sprung  up;  in  another  year,  bushes. 
In  an  astonishingly  short  time  a  vigorous  low 
growth  clothes  the  once  bare  stretch.  With  the 
advent  of  the  Portuguese,  however,  and  the 


,^  t  / 


TRURO  141 

always  increasing  cranberry  industry,  more 
land  is  brought  under  cultivation  every  year. 
And  thus  the  Cape  is  gradually  being  refor- 
ested and  ref armed. 

Many  travelers  to  Cape  Cod  are  astonished, 
and  a  little  disappointed,  to  see  green  grass  and 
sylvan  glades  where  they  expected  only  white 
sand  dunes.  There  are  plenty  of  dunes  if  one 
knows  where  to  look  for  them,  scattered  up 
and  down  the  coast.  But  in  the  more  fertile 
regions  it  is  difficult  to  trace  the  original  form- 
ation of  the  land.  If  you  wish  to  view  mile 
after  mile  of  wild  barrens,  where  the  vegeta- 
tion is  chiefly  moss,  and  where  the  sand  after 
every  storm  drifts  over  the  heads  of  the  sub- 
merged bushes  and  piles  up  around  the  decay- 
ing fence  rails;  where  there  is  hardly  a  boulder 
as  big  as  your  hand,  or  even  gravel,  and  the 
layer  of  soil  is  so  thin  that  you  can  kick  it  off 
with  your  toe  —  then  go  to  Truro.  Here,  more 
easily  than  anywhere  else,  —  unless  it  be  in 
Provincetown,  —  you  will  see  land  in  the 
process  of  making. 

Cape  Cod  is  sixty-five  miles  long  on  the 


142      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

North  Shore,  and  eighty  on  the  South  and  East. 
The  average  breadth  is  six  miles,  and  at  Truro 
this  narrows  down  to  three.  The  greatest 
height  above  the  sea  is  at  Scargo  Hill  in  Den- 
nis, which  is  three  hundred  feet  high. 

The  region  of  Barnstable  County  is  com- 
posed entirely  of  glacial  drift,  even  to  a  depth 
of  three  hundred  feet  in  some  places.  This  was 
brought  down  in  the  ice  age.  A  backbone  runs 
across  the  county,  and  from  its  height  one  may 
often,  when  driving  through  the  wood  roads, 
come  out,  as  on  a  plateau,  and  catch  a  glimpse 
of  the  sea.  There  is  a  clay  vein,  too,  which 
starts  across  the  Cape  and  crops  out  at  Truro 
in  the  so-called  "Clay  Pounds,"  now  crowned 
with  a  lighthouse,  shining  two  hundred  feet 
above  the  ocean.  Clam-shells  and  oyster-shells 
are  sometimes  found  miles  inland,  away  from 
any  breath  of  the  ocean.  They  are  thought  to 
be  the  last  traces  of  some  Indian  village. 

In  spite  of  the  popular  conviction  that  the 
entire  Cape  is  merely  one  sweep  of  Sahara-like 
desert,  it  was  thickly  forested  when  Gosnold 
discovered  it,  and  it  is  in  many  places  richly 


TRURO  143 

wooded  to-day,  although  Naushon  alone  at- 
tests the  noble  forests  of  the  past.  Those  who 
have  seen  the  autumn  forests  will  never  forget 
them.  Those  for  whom  this  great  delight  is 
still  in  store  cannot  do  better  than  to  read 
Thoreau's  classic  description:  '*!  never  saw  an 
autumnal  landscape  so  beautifully  painted  as 
this  was.  It  was  like  the  richest  rug  imaginable 
spread  over  an  uneven  surface;  no  damask  nor 
velvet,  nor  Tyrian  dye  or  stuffs,  nor  the  work 
of  any  loom,  could  ever  match  it.  There  was 
the  incredibly  bright  red  of  the  huckleberry, 
and  the  reddish  brown  of  the  bayberry,  min- 
gled with  the  bright  and  living  green  of  small 
pitch  pines,  and  also  the  duller  green  of  the 
bayberry,  boxberry,  and  plum;  the  yellowish 
green  of  the  shrub  oaks,  and  the  various  golden 
and  yellow  and  fawn-colored  tints  of  the  birch 
and  maple  and  aspen,  each  making  its  own 
figure,  and,  in  the  midst,  the  few  yellow  sand- 
slides  on  the  sides  of  the  hills  looked  like  the 
white  floor  seen  through  rents  in  the  rug." 

If  one  should  sail  in  an  aeroplane  above 
Barnstable  County  he   would   see  not  only 


144      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

shores  and  beaches,  gardens,  orchards,  cran- 
berry bogs,  groves  of  trees;  lawns  and  leafy 
thickets;  pleasant  meadows  and  hilly  slopes 
where  grow  the  aster  and  the  goldenrod,  the 
violet  and  mayflowers  in  due  season;  but,  as 
he  approached  Truro,  he  would  see  that  all 
these  things  grew  fewer.  Here,  in  spite  of 
strenuous  efforts  to  fasten  down  the  sand  and 
strengthen  the  harbor  shore  by  planting  beach- 
grass  and  trees,  the  sand  has  choked  up  the 
harbor,  and  even  yet  sifts  against  the  houses 
and  drifts  over  the  gardens,  and  in  time  of 
storm  whirls  across  the  narrow  strip  of  land 
until  even  the  humblest  cottage  may  boast 
ground-glass  windows. 

In  Truro,  as  in  Provincetown,  the  soil  for 
the  first  gardens  was  brought  over  in  the  hold 
of  vessels.  Quite  naturally  farming  has  never 
been  the  principal  occupation  in  such  a  region 
as  this.  Settled  in  1709  by  a  few  English  pur- 
chasers from  Eastham,  —  having  been  previ- 
ously occupied  by  irresponsible  fishermen  and 
traders,  —  it  began  its  career  energetically, 
and  under  the  name  of  "Dangerfield"  it  waged 


TRURO  145 

war  against  the  blackbirds  and  crows,  wolves 
and  foxes;  dug  clams,  fished  by  the  line  and 
net,  and  watched  for  whales,  in  vigorous  pio- 
neer fashion.  The  name  of  Truro  comes  from 
the  market  town  in  Cornwall.  Like  other  towns 
it  had  its  mackerel  fleet,  its  whalers,  and  its 
salt  industry.  In  1830  to  1855  the  wharves 
were  crowded  with  sloops  and  schooners.  A 
shipyard  was  kept  busy,  and  the  "turtle-shells 
of  the  salt-works,"  which  Thoreau  notes,  were 
dotted  all  along  the  shore.  Here  the  first 
Methodist  meeting-house  on  the  Cape  and 
the  second  in  New  England  was  built.  Doubt- 
less it  was  the  prototype  of  those  picturesque 
little  structures  that  are  silhouetted  against 
the  sky  to-day. 

When  the  Revolution  put  an  end  to  their 
maritime  enterprise,  the  Truro  fishermen,  like 
the  rest  of  the  Cape-Codders,  melted  up  their 
mackerel  leads  for  bullets,  and  made  a  record 
so  valiant  that  it  will  never  be  forgotten  as  long 
as  American  history  is  read. 

It  was  from  this  wind-swept  and  sand- 
scoured    town   of   twenty-three   houses    that 


146      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

twenty-eight  men  gave  up  their  Hves  for  lib- 
erty. The  spirit  in  which  they  carried  out  the 
embargo  on  tea  was  amazing.  Once  a  brigan- 
tine,  loaded  with  tea,  waited  outside  Truro  and 
offered  a  large  reward  for  transportation  serv- 
ices to  shore.  But  not  a  single  inhabitant  from 
the  town  could  be  prevailed  upon  to  touch  a 
single  box  of  the  cargo,  notwithstanding,  as 
the  old  records  state,  "that  we  had  several 
vessels  here  unemployed."  Their  determina- 
tion was  equaled  by  their  ingenuity.  Once, 
when  the  enemy  appeared  off  the  shore,  the 
town  was  defenseless  except  for  a  small  militia, 
and  the  British  seemed  about  to  land.  The 
same  sand  dunes  that  make  this  section  so  dif- 
ferent from  other  sections  rolled  back  from  the 
coast  —  then  as  now.  The  handful  of  militia 
took  a  position  behind  the  inner  hill,  walked 
over  it,  and  then,  hidden  by  a  hill  in  front, 
walked  back,  around,  and  over  the  first  eleva- 
tion again,  thus  making  a  procession  of  theat- 
rical length.  This  trick  —  popular  in  sheet  and 
pillow-case  parties  —  deceived  the  enemy,  and 
they  sailed  away  without  attempting  to  land. 


TRURO  147 

If  you  were  a  farmer  you  might  fall  a  victim 
to  despair  searching  for  a  scrap  of  soil  in  the 
lee  of  some  hill  into  which  to  thrust  a  seed.  But 
if  you  are  merely  a  traveler  you  will  be  struck 
by  the  beautiful  wild  sterility  of  this  section  of 
the  Cape,  recalling  similar  moors  in  the  roman- 
tic "Lorna  Doone"  country.  You  will  pause 
for  a  long  look  as  you  reach  the  top  of  the  hill 
by  the  Grand  View  Farm.  There  you  will  see 
the  red-roofed  cottage  half  hidden  by  the  slope 
and  the  flash  of  the  sea  far  beyond.  The  little 
gardens  terraced  patiently  down  the  various 
grades  will  remind  you  of  the  Azores,  and  you 
will  not  be  astonished  to  hear  the  farmer  speak- 
ing the  Portuguese  tongue.  You  will  pause 
again  as  you  come  out  on  the  hilltop  where  you 
get  your  first  glimpse  of  Provincetown,  and  see 
it  lying  before  you  as  you  have  so  often  seen  it 
on  the  map,  beckoning  you  out  —  and  out  .  .  . 

Fishing  and  fighting  —  these  were  the  two 
original  industries  of  this  old  Indian  Pamet. 
And  the  inhabitants  did  them  both  with  a  will, 
until  the  sand  choked  up  their  harbor  and  the 
enemy  departed  from  their  coast.    Now  the 


148   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

struggle  for  existence  is  more  difficult  and  less 
spectacular.  The  little  farmhouses  that  dot  the 
hills  testify  to  the  isolation  of  the  lives  which 
are  lived  there.  Bay  berry  candles  and  beach- 
plum  jelly,  mayflowers  and  heather,  sent  to 
market  eke  out  many  a  meager  household 
stipend,  and  the  smallness  of  the  garden 
patches  bear  pathetic  testimony  to  the  results 
of  the  season's  labor. 

A  tiny  free  library  finds  its  niche  at  the  bot- 
tom of  a  hill ;  the  towers  of  the  churches  shine 
against  the  sky,  reminding  us  of  that  other 
church  in  far  Tintagel  where,  once  a  year,  at 
Christmas-time,  the  bells  ring  out,  without  the 
touch  of  human  hand.  And  reminding  us,  too, 
that  the  first  Methodist  meeting-house  on  the 
Cape  and  the  second  in  the  country  was  built 
in  Truro,  in  1794.  Down  on  the  shore  there  is 
a  colony  of  summer  folk,  and  the  wide  auto- 
mobile road  binds  Truro  to  the  rest  of  the 
world. 


^-^^^^;r_- 


Chapter  XII 
PROVINCETOWN 

PROVINCETOWN  is  different  from  all 
the  rest  of  the  Cape :  different  from  all  the 
rest  of  the  world  —  although  all  '*land's-end" 
places  have  a  certain  haunting  odor  and  re- 
semblance. To  the  Pilgrims,  anchoring  in  the 
harbor  almost  three  hundred  years  ago,  this 
haven  of  shore  bloomed  forth  like  a  Paradise. 
They  describe  it  fervently  as  well  wooded  with 
"oakes,  pines,  sassafras,  juniper,  birch,  holly, 
pines,  some  ash,  walnut,"  and  dwell  fondly  on 
the  richness  of  the  forests  and  the  soil.  But  to 
the  pilgrims  of  to-day  —  approaching,  not  in 
a  sea-worn  cockle  of  a  boat,  but  in  a  well- 


150      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

padded  motor,  or  steam-car  —  this  bony, 
crooked  finger  extending  into  the  ocean  is  as 
bare  and  sinister  as  a  skeleton's  digit. 

The  long  road  lies  between  endless  dunes  of 
sand,  partially  covered  —  thanks  to  the  per- 
sistent efforts  of  the  United  States  Govern- 
ment —  with  a  mantle  of  beach  grass,  to  keep 
them  from  shifting.  But  the  wind,  permeated 
with  the  smell  of  drying  fish,  fresh  fish,  de- 
caying fish,  sweeps  over  the  thin  verdure  as 
desolately  as  it  would  over  a  desert.  There 
is  an  eeriness  in  the  interminable  approach, 
ghostly  and  unreal,  even  in  the  hot  summer 
sunshine. 

Perhaps  it  is  the  fantastic  structure  of  the 
dunes,  carved  in  intricate  mouldings:  some 
with  smoothly  rounded  tops,  others  combed  by 
unseen  fingers,  others  running  into  spectral 
peaks,  and  still  others  with  long,  flat  summits 
—  weird  sentinels,  linked  together  by  the  most 
unstable  and  most  resistless  chains.  No,  if  the 
Pilgrims  had  come  by  the  way  of  land  instead 
of  by  sea,  we  might  never  have  had  a  settle- 
ment at  Provincetown  —  only  a  lighthouse  at 


PROVINCETOWN  151 

the  menacing  tip  to  warn  vessels  away  from 
danger. 

But  they  did  come,  and  they  anchored  grate- 
fully, glad  enough  to  feel  earth  beneath  their 
feet  again,  after  sixty-three  days'  troublous 
tossing,  and  they  stayed  for  thirteen  days  — 
the  very  first  settlement  made  in  this  country 
by  our  forefathers ;  and  we  week-end  explorers 
of  a  softer  age,  poking  our  noses  into  the  quaint 
town  caught  up  on  this  amazing  hook,  find 
ourselves  drawn  into  an  atmosphere  more  for- 
eign than  any  other  in  the  United  States  — • 
unless  we  except  St.  Augustine. 

We  have  crossed  the  sandy  bar  which  leads 
from  North  Truro,  with  its  scattering  cottages 
becoming  more  frequent  nearing  the  town,  and 
here  we  are  on  Front  Street  —  the  narrowest, 
crookedest  thoroughfare,  compactly  lined  with 
ancient  cottages,  some  of  them  a  foot  below 
the  level  of  the  sidewalk;  with  hotels,  garages, 
shops,  and  stores;  crowded  with  dark-skinned 
Portuguese  and  laughing  summer  folk;  with 
artists  and  natives  and  tourists  and  trades- 
men; with  automobiles  and  fishcarts  and  per- 


152   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

ambulators;  with  barefooted  children  —  dark 
and  foreign-looking  —  and  with  dogs  that  lie 
in  the  sun,  impeding  traffic  as  unconcernedly 
as  do  their  venerated  brothers  in  the  land  of  the 
Mussulman. 

To  your  left  lie  the  rotting  wharves  where 
once  the  entire  living  of  the  community  was 
brought.  Under  your  feet  are  the  remnants  of 
the  famous  plankwalk,  built  after  much  wrang- 
ling from  the  town's  share  of  a  surplus  revenue 
distributed  by  Andrew  Jackson  and  an  ami- 
able Congress  in  1837.  It  was  regarded  as  such 
a  preposterous  extravagance  by  some  of  the 
old  inhabitants  that  they  indignantly  refused 
to  set  foot  upon  it,  but  plodded  righteously  in 
the  sandy  middle  of  the  road  until  the  day  of 
their  deaths.  Concrete  is  replacing  it  now,  how- 
ever, and  the  many  feet  that  tread  it  are  quite 
regardless  of  the  old  furor. 

Up  on  Town  Hill  to  your  right  stands  the 
famous  Pilgrim  Meniorial  Monument,  as  stern 
and  impressive  as  the  men  whose  lives  it  com- 
memorates. It  is  to  this  monument  that  we 
must  go  first  of  all,  to  get  the  "lay  of  the  land," 


PROVINCETOWN  153 

and  to  recall  the  few  historical  facts,  without 
which  it  is  impossible  to  understand  the  mean- 
ing of  Provincetown. 

The  granite  shaft  —  two  hundred  and  fifty- 
two  feet  high,  thirty  feet  higher  than  the  one 
on  Bunker-Hill  —  was  dedicated  in  August, 
1910,  by  the  Cape  Cod  Pilgrim  Memorial  As- 
sociation, which  received  a  grant  from  the 
Government  on  condition  that  the  shaft  might 
be  used  as  an  observation  tower  in  case  of  war. 
It  is  an  almost  exact  reproduction  of  the 
Torre  del  Mangia  in  Sienna,  and  similar  to  the 
campanile  of  the  Palazzo  Vecchio  in  Florence 
—  the  sole  reason  for  choosing  this  design  be- 
ing that  its  austere  beauty  recommended  itself 
to  the  engineers  and  architects.  The  ascent 
is  easy  —  an  inclined  plane  copied  from  that 
of  the  Campanile  San  Marco  in  Venice,  up 
which  Napoleon  is  supposed  to  have  ridden  on 
horseback. 

Sailors,  when  they  mount  to  the  top,  the 
care-keeper  tells  us,  insist  upon  clambering  up 
to  the  very  pinnacle,  where  they  can  be  seen 
from  the  village  peering  out  with  delight  over 


154      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  ocean  which  Hes  Uke  a  chart  before  them. 
We,  however,  will  be  quite  satisfied  to  remain 
behind  the  granite  pillars  of  the  parapet,  and 
look  out  upon  the  bended  sickle  of  the  Cape. 

Into  this  harbor  glided  the  Norsemen  in 
1004,  and  again  in  1007,  hauling  up  their  ves- 
sels for  repairs.  Although  there  is  always  con- 
troversy concerning  the  ways  and  days  of 
these  fleeting  rovers,  nevertheless  a  discovery 
of  sixty  years  ago  would  seem  to  substantiate 
the  theory  of  their  landing  here.  A  house 
was  being  erected  on  one  of  the  hills  which 
form  the  background  of  the  village,  and  four 
feet  below  the  surface  of  the  earth  —  twenty 
feet  below  the  original  crown  of  the  hill  — 
the  workmen  came  upon  a  remarkable  struc- 
ture of  stone.  Since  no  stone  larger  than  a 
man's  fist  is  to  be  found  in  this  section  of  the 
Cape,  and  as  the  foundations  of  the  houses  are 
invariably  of  brick,  the  ruin  excited  the  great- 
est interest.  The  excavation  was  carried  on 
more  carefully,  and  the  lower  portion  of  a 
building  of  considerable  size  —  of  the  shape  of 
a  parallelogram,  with  two  sides  still  standing 


PROVINCETOWN  155 

at  right  angles  —  was  brought  to  hght.  One 
corner  had  evidently  been  used  as  a  fireplace, 
and  there  were  ashes  and  the  bones  of  sea- 
fowl  and  small  animals.  The  stones  of  the  wall 
had  been  firmly  cemented  together  with  a 
cement  in  which  ground  shells  had  been  util- 
ized as  lime  — a  mode  of  structure  precisely 
similar  to  that  of  the  old  Stone  Mill  at  New- 
port, of  Norse  origin.  Whatever  this  building 
was,  sealed  up  in  the  sands  of  the  Province- 
town  dunes,  it  undoubtedly  antedates  the 
Pilgrims,  as  their  stay  was  brief,  and  Bradford 
mentions  no  such  erection  —  as  he  most  cer- 
tainly would  have  done.  The  Indians  left  no 
stone  records  of  any  kind.  Therefore,  those 
who  like  to  re-people  the  present  with  the  past 
have  excellent  authority  for  believing  that 
Thorwald  the  Viking  was,  indeed,  here,  and 
therefore  may  be  regarded  as  the  discoverer  of 
the  American  Continent. 

Without  question  other  adventurers  — Port- 
uguese and  Italian  —  stopped  here  also,  in 
those  early  days  of  romantic  adventuring,  but 
the  next  authentic  date  is  1602,  when  Bar- 


156   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

tholomew  Gosnold  and  John  Brereton,  setting 
sail  from  Falmouth,  England,  anchored  off 
this  sandy  hook,  went  ashore,  tramped  around, 
parleyed  with  the  Indians,  and  caught  codfish 
and  gave  the  ever-memorable  name  to  the 
vicinity.  After  diverse  experiences,  all  of  which 
are  written  down  quite  fully  in  the  ancient  his- 
tories if  one  cares  to  read  them,  they  pushed 
off  again,  found  their  way  to  Cuttyhunk,  where 
they  spent  the  winter,  returning  to  England 
the  following  June. 

The  next  year  Martin  Pring  came,  looking 
for  sassafras,  highly  valued  by  pharmacists. 
After  him  De  Monts  and  Champlain,  in  1605. 
De  Poitrincourt  came  in  the  early  part  of  the 
century,  staying  for  fifteen  days,  and  taking 
formal  possession  of  the  country  in  the  name 
of  the  French  King.  Then  came  John  Smith, 
whose  map  of  New  England,  dated  1614,  gives 
the  name  of  Milford  Haven  to  what  we  know 
as  Cape  Cod  Bay,  and  that  of  Stuart  Bay  to 
the  present  Massachusetts  Bay.  Although  this 
is  regarded  by  many  as  the  oldest  map  of  New 
England,  the  chart  made  by  Champlain,  from 


PROVINCETOWN  157 

his  observations  between  1604  and  1607,  is 
more  complete  in  its  geographical,  ethnologi- 
cal, zoological,  and  botanical  information. 
However,  that  was  when  this  part  of  the  coun- 
try was  known  as  New  France,  and  so,  after 
all,  John  Smith's  may  be  regarded  as  the  old- 
est map  of  New  England,  since  he  gave  this 
name  to  the  region  he  explored.  One  cannot 
pass  by  the  old  maps  without  speaking  of  the 
one  made,  half  a  century  after  Champlain's, 
by  another  Frenchman,  De  Barre,  only  excelled 
by  that  of  our  own  Coast  Survey.  Thus  the 
ante-Pilgrim  history  of  Cape  Cod  is  remark- 
ably well  recorded,  and  with  the  landing  of 
that  weary  but  indefatigable  band  on  Novem- 
ber 11,  1620,  the  records  are  entirely  complete. 
It  is  astonishing  how  tenacious  is  the  popu- 
lar belief  that  the  first  landing  of  the  Pilgrims 
in  this  country  was  at  Plymouth.  It  was  at 
what  is  now  Provincetown,  in  this  harbor, 
probably  at  Long  Point.  Here  it  was  that  that 
immortal  compact  —  the  earliest  example  of 
a  form  of  civil  government,  established  by  the 
act  of  the  people  to  be  governed  —  was  drawn 


158      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

up  and  signed  in  the  cabin  of  the  ship.  "Per- 
haps," says  John  Quincy  Adams,  "the  only 
instance  in  human  history  of  that  positive, 
original  social  compact,  which  speculative 
philosophers  have  imagined  as  the  only  legiti- 
mate source  of  government." 

Here  then,  before  our  very  eyes,  looking 
down  from  this  height,  is  the  place  in  which 
the  American  Republic  was  conceived;  and 
here,  while  the  men  waded  ashore  to  explore, 
and  the  women  promptly  instituted  the  first 
New  England  wash-day,  Dorothy  Bradford, 
the  wife  of  the  future  Governor,  slipped  into 
the  water  and  was  drowned,  and  Peregrine 
White  —  that  historic  infant  whose  cradle  and 
various  dwelling-places  have  been  so  assidu- 
ously cherished  —  was  born.  Births,  deaths, 
governmental  compacts,  and  a  prodigious  wash- 
day —  what  more  is  needed  to  attest  to  the 
substantiality  of  the  Pilgrim  landing? 

But  although  the  Pilgrims  landed,  they  did 
not  stay.  Many  of  them  had  caught  cold  from 
their  enforced  wading  from  vessel  to  land,  and 
the  bleak  shore  seemed  more  instead  of  less 


PROVINCETOWN  159 

forbidding,  as  they  lingered.  But  their  brief 
visit  opens  the  initial  page  in  American  his- 
tory, and  bestows  without  question  upon 
Provincetown  the  legitimate  title  of  the  first 
landing  of  our  forefathers. 

Fluctuation  is  the  dominant  characteristic  of 
Provincetown  history:  fluctuation  as  regards 
both  land  and  those  who  settled  upon  it.  The 
sand,  —  of  which  some  ingenious  statistician 
has  reckoned  that  tWo  million  tons  are  displaced 
yearly,  —  which  drifts  under  the  houses  and 
over  the  gardens ;  which  scours  the  windows  to 
opaqueness  and  buries  driftwood  and  uncovers 
the  roots  of  trees;  which  first  lures  and  then 
discourages  inquiring  prospective  inhabitants, 
—  is,  of  course,  responsible  for  the  former 
phenomenon,  and  possibly  for  the  latter.  Race 
and  soil  have  an  intimate  connection. 

After  the  union  of  the  Plymouth  and  Massa- 
chusetts Bay  Colonies  in  1692,  Provincetown, 
then  a  part  of  Truro,  became  a  fishing  hamlet. 
(It  sometimes  occurs  to  the  casual  student  of 
early  days  that  this  habit  of  the  Pilgrims  to 
range  forth  and  dot  their  fishing  stations  far 


160   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  wide,  like  the  twentieth-century  million- 
aire with  ''hunting  boxes  out  of  town,"  is 
rather  amusing.)  In  1741  it  was  set  off  as  a 
precinct  of  the  Province  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Colony.  Thus  the  name  of  Provincetown 
was  easily  arrived  at,  and  with  it  a  rather 
singular  arrangement,  which  kept  the  title  to 
lands  in  the  name  of  the  Colony  instead  of  in- 
dividuals. Those  who  erected  dwelling-houses, 
fish-houses,  and  wharves  within  the  limits  of 
the  former  precinct  occupied  the  position  of 
mere  squatters  or  tenants  on  sufferance  —  an 
anomalous  condition  which  continued  until 
1893.  In  this  way  a  populous  village  grew  up, 
with  houses,  shops,  churches,  and  schools,  and 
yet  not  a  single  householder  held  any  title  to 
the  land  on  which  his  building  stood.  When 
the  buildings  were  sold  and  conveyed,  the 
conveyance  was  in  the  form  of  a  quitclaim  and 
not  a  warranty.  It  was  less  than  twenty-five 
years  ago  that,  by  a  special  provision  of  the 
General  Court,  a  division  of  the  lands  was  made 
between  the  township  and  the  Commonwealth, 
the  latter  reserving  to  itself  a  large  section  of 


PROVINCETOWN  161 

the  unoccupied  lands  of  the  town,  stretching 
from  the  outskirts  of  the  settled  limits  of  the 
village  to  the  ocean,  and  conveying  to  the  town 
its  title  to  the  settled  portion  of  these  lands 
—  the  title  which  for  two  hundred  and  sixty 
years  had  belonged  to  the  Colonial  Province 
and  the  State.  These  Province  Lands  to-day 
are  largely  sand  dunes  which  the  Government 
is  persuading  beach  grass  to  cover. 

This  unusual  civic  arrangement  was  accom- 
panied by  a  continually  ebbing  and  rising  and 
ebbing  population.  "In  1749,"  says  Douglass 
in  his  "Summary,"  the  "town  consisted  of 
only  two  or  three  settled  families,  two  or  three 
cows,  and  about  six  sheep."  By  1755  there 
were  ten  or  fifteen  dwellings,  but  by  1764  the 
town  was  so  insignificant  that  the  census  for- 
got it  altogether.  During  the  War  of  1812  there 
was  great  depression,  and  in  1819  we  hear  that 
"there  was  only  one  horse  in  Province  town' 
and  that  was  an  old  white  one,  with  one  eye." 
With  peace  came  prosperity :  whale-fishing  and 
shore  and  Bank  fishing;  the  manufacture  of 
salt  and  of  oil ;  fortunes  were  made  in  ambergris, 


162      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  fishing  stories  assumed  enormous  propor- 
tions —  as  of  the  cHpper  Juha  Costa,  which 
under  a  Portuguese  skipper  set  sail  at  six  in 
the  morning  for  fishing  grounds  about  fifteen 
miles  northeast  of  Highland  Light,  took  one 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand  pounds  of  cod,  and 
arrived  at  her  Boston  moorings  an  hour  before 
midnight.  But  the  discovery  of  petroleum 
wiped  the  whaling  industry  off  the  map  and 
with  it  the  town  suffered  another  decline. 

And  now,  within  a  decade,  Provincetown 
has  come  into  a  new  era.  The  automobilists, 
who  scatter  their  laughter  and  their  largess  so 
good-naturedly  from  one  end  of  the  continent 
to  another,  have  discovered  it :  it  is  an  alluring 
week-end  trip.  One  may,  as  Thoreau  said, 
"stand  here  and  put  all  America  behind  him" 
—  not  a  mean  achievement  by  any  count. 
Besides  the  tourists  have  come  flocks  of  sum- 
mer colonists,  artistic  and  literary  folk,  who 
live  in  cottages  and  shacks  and  remodeled 
stables  and  patched-up  sheds;  there  are  schools 
of  art  and  other  ephemeral  and  permanent 
organizations;  and  all  summer  long  there  is  a 


PROVINCETOWN  163 

daily  boat  from  Boston  with  a  troop  of  excur- 
sionists. But  the  most  radical  change  of  all  is 
the  gradual  establishment  of  the  Portuguese 
in  the  first  home  of  our  forefathers.  Coming, 
as  those  original  settlers  came,  across  the  ocean 
from  the  east,  these  smiling  men  and  women 
have,  without  any  spectacular  ovation,  si- 
lently, persistently,  inconspicuously  achieved 
the  occupation  of  Provincetown.  In  the  chap- 
ter on  Barnstable  you  will  find  a  study  of  the 
racial  situation  on  Cape  Cod,  but  if  you  de- 
scend from  the  Monument  and  walk  through 
the  streets,  you  will  see,  in  a  graphic  exposi- 
tion, the  amazing  preponderance  of  this  quiet, 
comely  race. 

Portuguese  —  Portuguese  —  Portuguese 
everywhere.  They  are  the  fishermen,  the  store- 
keepers: the  men  work;  their  children  skip 
rope  on  the  sidewalk;  their  daughters  are 
waitresses  in  the  hotels  and  teachers  in  the 
schools.  For  the  passion  for  education,  which 
has  always  distinguished  Cape  Cod  from  the 
time  when  in  1673  the  revenue  derived  from 
the  fisheries  was  set  aside  for  the  schools,  seems 


164   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

to  have  illuminated  these  latest  of  Cape-Cod- 
ders.  There  are  Portuguese  women  who  can- 
not speak  English;  Portuguese  men  who  marry 
the  daughters  of  Cape  Cod  stock.  There  is 
every  shade  of  color  from  almost  black  to  a 
creamy  olive,  and  every  grade  of  refinement  in 
these  foreign  countenances.  Some  come  from 
the  Azores,  and  some  from  Portugal,  and  there 
is  more  or  less  of  a  feud  between  them,  and 
more  or  less  resentment  against  them  all  by 
the  natives.  But  they  are  a  thrifty  and  law- 
abiding  people,  and  here,  as  elsewhere  on  the 
Cape,  their  industry  and  picturesqueness  con- 
tribute something  not  without  value  to  the 
general  life. 

But  the  skeleton  on  which  the  body  of 
Provincetown  is  fashioned  —  the  bones  of  his- 
tory and  ethnology  and  geography  —  is  not 
the  complete  picture  of  this  quaintest  of  all 
the  Cape  towns.  The  superficial  attributes  are 
possibly  even  more  fascinating. 

It  is  here  that  we  find  the  quintessence  of 
the  seafaring  atmosphere,  for  although  the 
inhabitants  no  longer  depend  exclusively  upon 


PROVINCETOWN  165 

the  ocean  to  bring  them  their  means  of  HveH- 
hood,  yet  in  a  place  so  completely  surrounded 
by  water,  peculiar  and  charming  customs  be- 
come an  integral  part  of  the  daily  life.  In  the 
houses,  for  instance,  one  finds  cabinets  con- 
taining great,  curious  shells,  and  shells  orna- 
ment the  gateposts  or  mark  a  line  to  the  front 
walk.  The  key  left  in  a  shop  door  will  dangle 
a  shell  instead  of  a  billet  of  wood;  henyards 
are  occasionally  fenced  around  with  pieces  of 
an  old  seine;  lobster  pots,  herring  pots,  and 
conch  shells  are  set  upon  the  lintels;  boats  are 
converted  into  flower  beds;  and  garden  beds 
—  whose  original  earth  was  brought  in  ships 
from  a  more  generous  soil  —  are  neatly  outlined 
in  scallop  shells.  The  codfish  is  the  favorite 
weather  vane,  although  the  swordfish  and  the 
ship  are  close  behind  in  popularity;  and  more 
than  one  door  is  kept  ajar  by  a  whale's  tooth 
wedged  underneath.  The  atmosphere,  both 
actually  and  figuratively,  is  soaked  with  salt 
water  and  the  nameless  and  numberless  asso- 
ciations which  are  part  of  it. 

One  may  get  a  glimpse  of  Provincetown  in 


166      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

an  hour;  a  day  is  better;  a  week  is  better  still; 
and  a  summer  is  none  too  much.  But  no 
glimpse  of  the  present  is  complete  without 
some  recollection  of  the  vivid  scenes  of  the 
past.  It  was  in  the  winter  of  1874-75  that 
Provincetown  was  hermetically  sealed  by  a 
glittering  ice-field  from  Wood  End  to  Mano- 
met  —  a  distance  of  twenty-two  miles.  A 
fleet  of  fishing  vessels  was  caught  in  the  floe, 
and  stood  there,  their  hulls,  rigging,  and  taper- 
ing spars  encrusted  with  ice,  like  fairy  vessels 
of  glass.  It  was  one  immense,  crystalline  desert 
with  signals  of  distress  fluttering  from  the  im- 
mobile craft  —  a  scene  of  perilous  beauty  and 
wicked  enchantment.  Some  of  the  boats  were 
abandoned  by  their  crews,  who  had  eaten 
their  last  crust  and  burned  the  bulwarks  of 
their  vessel  for  fuel;  some  were  crushed  like 
paper  under  the  terrific  pressure  of  sea  and  ice; 
some  were  held  fast  for  a  month,  and  only  re- 
leased by  the  breaking-up  of  the  ice  floes.  It 
is  hard  for  us  to  stand  here  and  survey  the 
peaceful  harbor  and  realize  that  scene  of  sav- 
age and  miraculous  wonder. 


PROVINCETOWN  167 

Shipwrecks  without  number  have  occurred 
here.  Bradford  mentions  the  Sparrowhawk 
as  having  been  stranded  here  in  1626,  and  a 
Httle  more  than  two  hundred  years  later  the 
remains  of  a  hull  of  an  ancient  ship  were  un- 
covered at  Nauset  Beach  in  Orleans,  embedded 
in  the  mud  of  a  meadow  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
from  any  water  that  would  have  floated  her. 
The  unusual  build  of  the  vessel,  unsealed  from 
its  tomb  of  two  centuries,  has  made  the  in- 
vestigators feel  confident  that  it  was  no  other 
than  this  ancient  vessel  —  perhaps  the  first 
to  be  dashed  to  destruction  on  this  fatal  coast. 
Another  strange  occurrence  was  when  the 
British  frigate,  the  Somerset,  chased  by  the 
French  fleet  on  the  Back  Side,  as  the  Atlantic 
Coast  of  the  Cape  is  called,  struck  on  Peaked 
Hill  Bars,  and  was  flung  far  up  on  the  beach 
by  the  terrific  force  of  the  waves.  Stripped  by 
a  "plundering  gang  from  Provincetown  and 
Truro,"  the  frigate  lay  at  the  mercy  of  the 
sands,  and  they  gradually  hid  her  even  from 
memory.  But  the  strong  gales  and  the  high 
tide  of  1886  tore  the  merciful  shroud  aside  and 


168   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

brought  the  blackened  timbers  again  to  Hght. 
"The  grim  old  ship,  tormented  by  relic  hunt- 
ers, peered  out  over  the  sea,  looking  from 
masthead  to  masthead  for  the  Union  Jack, 
and,  disgusted  with  what  she  saw,  dived  once 
more  under  her  sandy  cover,  where  the  beach 
grass  now  grows  over  her." 

There  was  the  tragic  case  of  the  Brutus, 
which  struck  on  the  bars  at  Cape  Race,  in 
1802.  All  the  crew  reached  shore,  but  froze  to 
death.  There  was  also  the  wreck  of  the  Gio- 
vanni, which,  caught  in  an  icy  gale,  was  dis- 
mantled of  her  rigging  before  the  very  eyes  of 
the  spectators  on  the  shore,  who  were  power- 
less to  send  aid.  It  was  literally  possible  to 
stand  on  the  shore  and  see  the  seas  sweeping 
the  decks  and  roaring  about  the  rigging  in 
which  the  sailors  had  taken  refuge;  it  was  pos- 
sible to  see  them,  one  by  one,  picked  off  the 
rigging,  while  the  ship  settled  down  into  the 
sandy  grave  the  waves  were  wildly  digging. 
Finally  the  men  on  shore,  utterly  impotent, 
saw  the  last  sailor  drop  down  from  the  frozen 
rigging  into  the  raging  ocean,  and  saw  the 


PROVINCETOWN  169 

masts  strain,  crack,  and  bend,  and  crash  in 
ruin  upon  the  shattered  hull.  Here  it  was  that 
the  City  of  Portland  was  supposed  to  have 
gone  down  in  1898. 

It  is  all  over  now  —  those  fierce  and  terrible 
days.  The  Cape  Cod  Canal  has  opened  a  chan- 
nel of  safety  for  the  seagoing  ships.  The  beach 
grass  is  holding  down  with  a  billion  fingers  the 
dangerous  sand  that  used  to  drift  and  bury 
and  cut  and  ruin  the  houses  and  roads  and 
paths  of  Provincetown.  On  Long  Point  and 
Race  Point  and  at  Wood  End,  lighthouses 
glitter  and  beckon  the  way  to  safety.  The 
story  of  the  life-saving  stations  and  of  the  his- 
torical wrecks  and  of  the  work  of  the  Humane 
Society  is  perhaps  best  told  at  Chatham. 


Chapter  XIII 


CHATHAM  AND  THE  LIFE-SAVING  SERVICE 

CHATHAM  —  you  must  pronounce  it 
Chat-ham^  like  the  ham  in  a  sandwich  if 
you  wish  to  be  correct:  Cape-Codders  do  not 
mumble  their  words,  and  give  firm  accent  to 
every  syllable;  "Chatum"  marks  the  summer 
cockney  —  Chatham,  then,  is  one  of  the  very 
loveliest  of  all  the  Cape  towns.  From  its  shore 
run  out  myriad  little  fingers  of  land,  making  a 
coast-line  which  is  a  maze  of  "blue  inlets  and 
their  crystal  creeks."  It  seems  like  a  fairy  sea, 
swathed  in  mists  or  jeweled  in  sunshine;  and 
the  land  itself,  torn  into  such  exquisite  tatters, 
partakes  somewhat  of  the  lambent  shimmer. 
This   intricate   coast   not   only   distinguishes 


CHATHAM  171 

Chatham  externally,  but  reveals  the  records  of 
her  past  and  explains  much  of  her  economic 
career;  for  these  shifting  sands  have  made  it 
quite  impossible  for  the  town  to  have  had  any 
centralizing  industry. 

With  a  coast  which  is  perpetually  in  a  state 
of  flux;  with  chasms  being  forced  open  and  be- 
ing forced  shut;  with  a  constant  washing-away 
of  the  shore  in  one  place  and  a  building-up  in 
another  —  what  wonder  that  the  fragments  of 
the  lighthouses  which  once  stood  on  the  firm 
headlands  now  strew  the  beach,  and  that  the 
soil  on  which  they  were  built  mingles  with  the 
sand  of  the  ocean?  Inlets,  salt  and  fresh  water 
ponds  —  there  are  thirty  of  these  latter  in 
Chatham  —  pierce  and  thread  through  this 
whole  fascinating  region,  making  a  topographi- 
cal delicacy  which  suggests  a  lady  in  a  veil 
of  mist  swathed  in  lacy  garments,  with  one 
long  streamer  —  the  shred  of  Monomoy  — 
fluttering  from  her  neck.  But  this  fantastically 
attired  creature  is,  beneath  her  smile,  only  the 
wickedest  of  sirens,  and  hundreds  and  hun- 
dreds of  boats,  caught  on  some  shoal  or  reef  of 


172      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

her  drifting  tentacles,  have  been  swirled  to 
death;  and  thousands  of  voices  in  the  agony 
of  death  have  cursed  her  through  the  storm 
for  a  fiend. 

It  takes  only  a  glance  at  the  peculiar  jagged 
formation  of  this  part  of  the  Cape  to  see  what 
a  perilous  place  it  must  be.  Even  now,  with 
the  Cape  Cod  Canal  cut  through,  there  are 
wrecks  here  every  year;  and  before  the  life- 
saving  stations  were  established,  the  disasters 
were  practically  without  number.  The  hook 
of  Monomoy  and  the  hook  of  Provincetown 
have  vied  with  each  other  in  their  evil  deeds, 
and  plunging  their  beaks  into  the  ocean  have 
come  up  again  and  again  like  insatiable  hawks 
with  victims  dangling  and  dripping  with  blood 
and  water. 

There  were  no  records  kept  of  the  disasters 
along  this  coast  previous  to  the  establishment 
of  the  United  States  Life-Saving  Service  in 
1872,  except  in  town  records  and  local  histories, 
but  some  were  so  memorable  that  they  can 
never  be  forgotten.  Among  these  are  the 
wrecks  of  the  Sparrowhawk,  the  Brutus,  and 


CHATHAM  173 

the  Somerset  (mentioned  in  the  chapter  on 
Provincetown)  which  were  among  the  first 
vessels  in  the  history  of  this  country  to  go 
down.  Close  upon  their  foaming  wakes  we  see 
a  long  line  of  phantom  vessels,  once  floating 
buoyantly  upon  the  water,  now  sailing  on  for- 
ever —  only  in  mirage  and  memory. 

We  see  the  Widdah  —  that  pirate  ship  whose 
career  of  crime  would  do  credit  to  a  Peter  Pan 
party  —  with  her  twenty-three  guns  and  her 
crew  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  men.  It  was 
in  April,  1718,  that  she  captured  seven  prizes, 
and  in  order  to  get  them  to  shore  put  some  of 
her  crew  on  each  of  them.  But  the  captain  of 
one  of  them,  seeing  that  the  pirates  who  had 
been  transferred  to  his  ship  were  drunk,  craft- 
ily anchored  in  Provincetown  Harbor,  where 
the  seven  pirates  were  apprehended  and  after- 
ward tried  and  executed  in  Boston.  The  Wid- 
dah herself  was  inveigled  across  the  shoals, 
where  she  struck,  and,  a  storm  rising,  was 
wrecked.  The  news  of  the  pirate  fleet  prompted 
the  Government  to  send  Captain  Southack  to 
the  scene  to  see  that  the  wreck  should  not  be 


174      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

plundered,  and  the  story  of  his  miraculous  voy- 
age is  given  in  the  chapter  on  Orleans.  One 
hundred  and  two  men  were  buried  on  the  beach 
at  that  one  time,  and  eight  of  the  pirates  were 
hung.  There  is  still  a  legend  drifting  about  of 
a  man  of  frightful  and  singular  aspect  who 
used  to  visit  the  Cape  every  season.  He  would 
never  speak  to  any  one,  but  his  ejaculations 
during  his  sleep  —  ribald  and  blasphemous  — 
convinced  the  people  of  this  region  that  he  had 
been  one  of  the  pirate  crew,  and  that  he  had 
come  to  visit  a  concealed  hoard  of  gold.  When 
he  died  a  belt  filled  with  gold  pieces  was  found 
about  his  waist.  The  Widdah  is  only  one  of 
that  spectacular  procession  of  phantom  ships 
which  pass  before  our  memory.  We  see  the 
Josephus,  a  British  vessel  with  a  cargo  of  iron 
rails,  striking  on  the  Peaked  Hill  Bars.  Her 
crew  were  driven  to  the  rigging  from  whence 
their  anguished  cries  could  be  heard  to  the 
mainland.  Heroic  life-savers  hurled  themselves 
into  the  tempest,  and  they  and  the  wailing 
crew  and  the  ship  itself,  before  the  eyes  of  the 
horror-stricken  watchers  on  the  shore,  were 


CHATHAM  175 

ground  to  atoms  by  the  monstrous  waves.  We 
see  the  immigrant  ship,  the  FrankHn,  deUber- 
ately  run  ashore  in  1849  near  Cahoon's  Hol- 
low, and  we  still  hear  the  shrieks  of  the  victims 
of  that  fearful  crime.  In  the  year  1853  we  see 
no  less  than  twenty-three  appalling  disasters 
along  the  shores  of  Cape  Cod.  The  weather 
was  bitterly  cold,  and  at  the  time  when  the  ves- 
sels were  lost  such  violent  storms  swept  the 
coast  that  nothing  could  be  done  to  succor  the 
drowning  crews.  Those  who  did  reach  the  shore 
died  upon  the  desolate  uplands  and  beaches. 
We  see  the  White  Squall,  a  blockade-runner, 
who  came  safely  home  the  long  way  from 
China;  but  when  she  struck  the  back  of  the 
Cape  she  went  down  in  total  wreckage.  The 
Aurora,  with  palm  oil  from  the  west  of  Africa; 
the  Clara  Bella,  coal-laden;  the  bark  Giovanni, 
with  wine  from  the  happy  fields  of  Italy;  the 
iron  ship  Jason,  with  its  loss  of  twenty-four 
lives;  the  steamer  City  of  Portland,  in  1898, 
lost,  no  one  knows  where,  but  whose  last 
wreckage  was  washed  up  on  this  shore  —  all 
too  quickly  and  too  tragically  do  these  phan- 


176      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

torn  ships  press  upon  each  other  as  we  recall 
them,  with  their  divers  cargoes  and  brave  re- 
cords behind  them.  They  are  vanished  now, 
and  their  shattered  hulks  are  part  of  the  drift- 
wood that  flecks  the  shores.  Even  their  names 
and  the  names  of  their  passengers  and  crews 
are  fading  on  the  pages  of  those  old  marine 
books  which  fill  a  small  corner  in  every  Cape 
Cod  library. 

In  spite  of  the  number  and  horror  of  these 
catastrophes  it  was  not  until  1871  that  Con- 
gress appropriated  the  two  hundred  thousand 
dollars  which  made  a  Life-Saving  Service  pos- 
sible. Previously  to  this,  the  Massachusetts 
Humane  Society,  a  private  charity,  was  the 
sole  agent  of  rescue  along  this  entire  coast. 
This  society,  which  still  continues  such  excel- 
lent work  along  salt  and  fresh  water  basins,  is 
one  of  the  oldest  in  the  world.  It  originated  its 
coast  service  more  than  thirty-six  years  before 
the  English;  while  the  French  service  did  not 
come  into  being  until  very  much  later.  Estab- 
lished in  1786  and  incorporated  a  few  years 
later,  the  society  began  its  organized  relief  not 


CHATHAM  177 

only  along  Cape  Cod,  but  along  the  whole 
Atlantic  Coast  as  far  as  it  could,  by  placing 
huts  along  the  shore  in  desolate  places  where 
shipwrecked  persons  might  be  cast.  These 
huts  held  boats,  first-aid  kits,  flares  for  light- 
ing, etc.,  and  were  dependent  upon  volunteer 
crews.  ^  Although  the  State  and  the  Federal 
Governments  were  appreciative  of  the  serv- 
ices rendered  by  the  society,  —  as  is  shown  by 
substantial  contributions  from  time  to  time, 

—  yet  both  State  and  Federal  Governments 
were  very  slow  in  assuming  the  responsibilities 
which  were  obviously  theirs,  and  not  a  private 
charity's.  As  early  as  1797  the  town  of  Truro 
sold  the  United  States  Government  a  tract  of 
land  for  a  lighthouse,  where  Highland  Light 

—  the  first  on  the  Cape  —  was  built.  But  it 
was  not  until  seventy-five  years  later  that  the 
first  life-saving  station  was  erected.  Now  there 
are  stations  about  every  five  miles  from  Prov- 
incetown  to  Monomoy  —  at  Wood  End,  Race 
Point,  Peaked  Hill  Bars,  High  Head,  High- 

^  The  first  building  of  this  kind  was  erected  at  Lovell's 
Island  in  Boston  Harbor  in  1807. 


178      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

lands,  Pamet  River,  Cahoon's  Hollow,  Nauset, 
Orleans,  Old  Harbor,  Chatham,  Monomoy, 
and  Monomoy  Point. 

Picture  to  yourself  a  small,  plain  house,  set 
upon  a  sand  dune,  yet  out  of  reach  of  high 
water,  painted  red  so  that  it  is  visible  from 
quite  a  distance,  and  further  distinguished  by 
a  tall  flagstaff.  You  enter  and  find,  on  the  first 
floor,  five  rooms :  a  mess-room  which  also  serves 
as  a  sitting-room  for  the  crew;  a  kitchen;  a 
keeper's  room;  a  boat-room;  and  beach  ap- 
paratus room.  There  are  wide,  double-leafed 
doors  opening  out  upon  a  sloping  platform 
down  which  the  surf -boat  may  be  quickly  run. 
On  the  second  floor  are  two  rooms:  one  con- 
tains cots  for  the  crew  and  the  other  for  rescued 
persons.  This  is  a  United  States  Life-Saving 
Station,  and  here  the  keeper  lives  throughout 
the  year.  From  August  1  to  June  1  of  the  fol- 
lowing year  he  has  with  him  a  crew  of  life- 
savers  whose  exploits  would  honor  any  Book 
of  Brave  Deeds.  During  July  and  August,  as 
there  are  practically  no  big  storms,  the  men 
have  a  vacation.  As  most  of  them  live  near,  it 


CHATHAM  179 

is  easy  to  summon  them  in  case  of  need.  It  is 
during  these  summer  months,  when  the  crew 
are  away  and  the  sea  is  calm,  that  the  keeper 
not  infrequently  moves  his  family  into  the  sta- 
tion, and  more  than  one  yachtsman  has  en- 
joyed the  hospitality  of  such  an  improvised 
home,  and  delighted  summer  visitors  have 
joined  in  the  clambakes  on  the  beach. 

But  when  the  summer  sun  grows  wintry  and 
the  ocean  begins  to  mutter,  then  the  yachts- 
men and  the  summer  folk  depart,  and  the  life- 
savers  assemble  for  their  ten  months  of  stern 
service.  There  are  drills  every  day,  of  course: 
drills  in  launching  and  landing  the  lifeboats 
through  the  surf;  flag  drills  and  lantern  drills 
in  the  International  and  General  Code  of 
Signaling;  drills  with  beach  apparatus  and 
breeches  buoy;  resuscitation  drills.  Every  man 
knows  in  detail  every  act  he  is  to  perform  in 
every  emergency.  If,  in  one  month  after  the 
opening  of  the  active  season,  a  crew  cannot 
effect  a  mimic  rescue  within  five  minutes,  it  is 
considered  that  they  have  been  remiss  in  drill- 
ing. Of  course,  in  time  of  actual  storm  no  such 


180   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

celerity  is  possible :  here,  the  surf,  the  currents, 
and  the  stranded  craft  herself  all  conspire 
against  the  work  of  rescue.  Frequently  the 
horses  which  are  kept  at  every  station  refuse 
to  pull  the  cart  which  carries  the  apparatus, 
and  their  heads  have  to  be  covered  before  they 
can  be  induced  to  go  out  into  the  fury  of  the 
elements.  It  is  obvious  that  all  the  drilling 
would  go  for  naught  unless  the  men,  beside 
being  well  trained,  were  temperamentally 
brave  and  quick-witted  in  time  of  danger. 

On  clear  days  a  watch  is  kept  from  every 
station  from  the  lookout  tower.  Thus  every 
single  vessel  that  is  sighted  is  recorded,  and  in 
case  of  non-arrival  can  be  quickly  traced  to 
the  last  place  where  she  was  sighted.  On  foggy 
days  and  in  thick  weather,  when  one  could  not 
see  from  the  lookout,  a  patrol  is  kept,  just  like 
the  night  patrol.  This  patrol  is  faithful  to  the 
last  degree,  and  all  night  long,  in  snow  and 
blizzard,  with  the  thermometer  below  zero  and 
the  wind  blowing  fifty  miles  an  hour,  over 
quicksands  and  "cut  throughs"  on  the  beach 
through  which  the  seas  rush  through  to  the 


CHATHAM  181 

lowlands  —  in  all  times  and  weathers,  the 
silent  guard  keeps  watch  along  the  coast  of 
the  Cape. 

It  is  arranged  in  this  way:  The  night  is  di- 
vided into  four  watches;  two  surf  men  at  each 
station  are  assigned  to  each  watch ;  at  the  des- 
ignated time  they  set  out  from  the  station  in 
opposite  directions,  keeping  well  down  on  the 
beach  as  near  the  surf  as  possible.  Midway 
between  each  station  is  a  little  halfway  house. 
Here  the  two  surfmen  from  the  neighboring 
stations  meet,  get  warm,  exchange  checks  to 
prove  that  both  of  them  have  made  the  ap- 
pointed trip,  and  then  return.  As  there  are 
telephones  between  the  halfway  station  houses 
and  the  stations,  any  delay  or  absence  of  a  surf- 
man  can  immediately  be  reported,  and  search- 
ers sent  out  to  find  if  he  is  in  trouble  —  for 
the  walk  is  often  a  hazardous  one  beset  with 
dangers  —  or  if  he  is  in  need  of  help  for  some 
vessel  in  distress.  At  each  end  of  the  route, 
where  there  is  no  "halfway  house,"  the  men 
punch  a  time  clock  to  record  the  hour  of  their 
arrival. 


182   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Those  who  live  in  cities  or  inland  villages 
rarely  comprehend  the  necessity  or  the  dif- 
ficulties of  this  service.  The  elements  are  so 
chained  by  man's  ingenuity  on  land  that  many 
people  have  almost  forgotten  the  savage  wild- 
ness  of  a  storm  at  sea.  To  them  stories  of  the 
bravery  of  these  surf  men  —  keeping  to  their 
patrol  in  spite  of  blizzards  that  half  blind  and 
wholly  numb  them;  through  storm  tides  and 
tempests,  along  exposed  beaches  where  the 
wind  lashes  a  million  whips  of  icy  terror  — 
seem  as  far  away  as  stories  of  the  Arabian 
Nights.  But  all  night  and  every  night,  while 
inlanders  are  snugly  sleeping,  the  patrol 
marches  up  and  down  the  coast,  guarding 
those  on  shore  from  sudden  shock  of  flood,  and 
ready  with  all  the  assistance  that  man  has  ever 
devised  for  the  help  of  man  at  sea.  Some  of 
these  means  of  assistance  are  the  result  of 
years  of  scientific  study.  The  idea  of  a  life- 
boat was  first  conceived  by  a  London  coach- 
maker,  and  the  present  boat  is  the  result  of  a 
century  of  patient  experimentation.  Any  one 
who  has  ever  seen  the  surfmen  handling  one 


CHATHAM  183 

of  these  boats  —  so  light  that  they  can  be 
quickly  run  down  the  beach,  and  yet  so  strong 
that  they  can  withstand  the  most  tumultuous 
waves  —  knows  something  of  the  extraordi- 
nary skill  that  has  gone  into  the  making  of  such 
a  craft  and  its  handling.  The  method  of  estab- 
lishing communication  between  a  stranded 
vessel  and  the  shore  by  means  of  a  mortar  is 
over  a  century  old  and  was  worked  out  by 
Lieutenant  Bell,  of  the  British  Royal  Artil- 
lery, in  1791.  He  demonstrated  the  practica- 
bility of  the  mortar,  which  could  carry  a  heavy 
shot  four  hundred  yards  from  a  vessel  to  the 
shore.  Later  the  mortar  was  used  to  send  a 
line  over  the  vessel  from  the  shore. 

The  duties  of  the  life-savers  do  not  consist 
in  merely  saving  human  lives  in  time  of  storm 
or  in  assisting  them  after  they  are  rescued. 
This  service  saves  hundreds  of  stranded  ves- 
sels and  their  cargoes  from  complete  or  par- 
tial destruction;  it  protects  wrecked  property 
from  plunderers  and  further  ravages  of  the 
elements;  it  averts  numerous  disasters  by 
flashing  signals  of  warning  to  vessels  in  danger; 


184      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

it  assists  the  Custom-House  Service  in  col- 
lecting revenues  of  the  Government,  and  pre- 
vents smuggling;  in  time  of  flood  or  tidal  waves 
it  cares  for  those  on  shore  as  well  as  those  at 
sea.  Furthermore,  it  keeps  a  valuable  record, 
not  only  of  passing  vessels,  but  of  the  condition 
of  the  surf  and  the  weather,  barometer  and 
thermometer.  And  finally,  it  is  a  valuable  part 
of  the  national  defense.  When  we  declared 
war  against  Germany,  the  Coast  Guard  auto- 
matically became  (under  a  law  newly  passed 
by  Congress)  an  integral  part  of  the  Navy  of 
the  United  States.  It  is  now  a  branch  of  the 
naval  service;  its  personnel  is  regularly  en- 
listed and  armed  with  rifles,  and  each  one  of 
its  stations  provided  with  a  machine  gun. 

Under  the  head  of  the  Coast  Guard  is  also 
the  Revenue  Cutter  Service.  These  cutters, 
owned  by  the  Government,  are  ready  at  all 
times  to  tow  boats  to  places  of  safety.  Thus, 
when  some  vessel  is  sighted  from  a  life-saving 
station,  laboring  along  under  a  load  of  lime  or 
stone,  and  evidently  in  distress,  word  is  sent 
the  Acushnet  at  Wood's  Hole  or  to  the  Gres- 


CHATHAM  185 

ham  at  Boston,  which  comes  as  promptly  as 
possible  and  tows  the  boat  out  of  her  diffi- 
culties, and  possibly  to  her  port  of  destina- 
tion. This  saves  the  vessel  the  price  of  a  tow- 
boat  —  a  fee  which  might  be  half  the  value  of 
the  craft  and  quite  beyond  her  power  to  pay. 
Boats  of  this  sort  get  into  trouble  more  fre- 
quently at  Chatham  than  at  any  other  place, 
although  the  whole  "pitch  of  the  Cape"  — 
as  this  back  side  is  called  —  is  extremely  dan- 
gerous. 

Tales  of  wreck,  tales  of  heroism,  tales  of 
tragedy  and  comedy  are  an  integral  part  of 
the  story  of  the  Life-Saving  Service  along  the 
Cape.  And  Chatham,  with  its  fine  summer 
hotels  and  fine  summer  houses,  with  its  wind- 
mill on  the  hill,  trimmed  with  red  like  a  pic- 
ture in  a  nursery  book,  marks,  for  all  its  ap- 
parent nonchalance,  the  most  perilous  spot  of 
a  perilous  coast.  Here,  times  without  number, 
men  have  dashed  themselves  into  the  ravenous 
surf  to  save  the  lives  of  other  men  whom  they 
had  never  seen,  while  shrieks  of  anguish,  such  as 
safe  inlanders  have  never  heard,  have  reached 


186   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  listening  shore.  Here  many  a  spar  has  been 
washed  up  on  the  beach,  bearing  a  burden  of 
the  dead  such  as  only  the  waves  can  witness. 

Well  may  the  bathers  dance  along  the  happy 
shore  during  the  summer  sunshine !  Far  out  to 
sea  on  every  hand  there  is  a  moaning  which 
neither  wind  can  stifle  nor  sunshine  allay  — 
the  moaning  of  a  perpetual  dirge  for  those  who 
have  perished  along  this  crystal  coast. 


Chapter  XIV 


HARWICH  AND  THE  CAPE  COD  SCHOOLS 

EVER  since  1670,  when  Cape  Cod  estab- 
lished the  first  public  schools  in  this 
country,  maintaining  them  with  funds  from  the 
fisheries  tax,  —  no  mean  drain  upon  the  scanty- 
resources  of  hard-working  pioneers,  —  this 
section  of  New  England  has  been  famed  for  its 
excellent  educational  facilities. 

This  establishment  of  public  schools  was  a 
prodigious  feat,  requiring  a  high  degree  of  ini- 
tiative. For  we  must  remember  that  the  com- 
mon-school system  was  not  one  of  the  institu- 
tions transplanted  by  our  forefathers  from  the 
mother  country,  but  one  which  grew  out  of 


188   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

the  necessities  of  their  situation.  In  the  Old 
World  from  which  they  came  they  had  been 
used  to  family  education  in  the  home,  and  this 
practice  was  maintained  by  the  colonists  with 
conscientious  fidelity  until  they  worked  out 
the  beginnings  of  our  present  public-school  sys- 
tem for  the  more  general  education  of  youth. 
We  notice  the  effects  of  this  long-continued 
and  well-standardized  teaching  in  this  region, 
not  only  by  the  general  high  intelligence  of  its 
inhabitants,  —  for  they  are  innately  a  keen, 
sagacious  type,  —  but  in  their  manner  of  ad- 
dress, their  choice  of  words,  and  their  ability 
to  express  themselves. 

An  Indian  woman  from  Mashpee  will,  while 
working  in  your  kitchen,  inquire,  '*Is  this  the 
appropriate  dish  in  which  to  serve  the  pota- 
toes .f^"  And  the  man  who  plants  your  garden 
or  sells  you  fish  will  ask  questions  and  answer 
them,  and  throw  in  a  little  philosophy  on  the 
side,  with  a  more  cultivated  diction  than  many 
of  the  summer  folk  who  employ  him. 

Travelers,  particularly  those  from  the  West, 
are  often  struck  by  the  pleasing  quality  of 


HARWICH  189 

voice  and  astonishingly  correct  enunciation  of 
a  child  by  the  roadside  —  whether  that  child 
be  a  native,  a  Portuguese,  or  an  Indian.  Of 
course,  there  are  plenty  of  provincialisms  of 
speech,  and  idioms,  succinct  and  terse.  Ad- 
vice as  to  managing  your  automobile  is  fre- 
quently couched  in  nautical  terms:  you  are 
warned,  in  diverse  exigences,  not  to  "sail  too 
close  to  the  wind,"  or,  ''don't  get  becalmed." 
Directions  on  land  as  well  as  sea  often  include 
suggestions  that  you  "tack  to  leeward."  There 
is  a  nasal  tang  to  many  voices,  probably  due  to 
climatic  influences.  But,  as  a  whole,  the  Cape- 
Codder  is  conspicuous  for  his  well-spoken  hab- 
its and  for  his  stock  of  accurate  and  wide  in- 
formation. There  are  no  little  dark  pockets 
hidden  in  the  hills,  such  as  one  finds  in  the 
Berkshires,  where  isolation  and  ignorance  have 
brought  about  conditions  quite  as  appalling  — 
if  not  as  widespread  —  as  those  among  the 
mountaineers  in  Kentucky.  Every  child  in 
every  hamlet  here  goes  to  school.  There  are 
less  than  one  hundred  illiterates  of  school  age 
in  the  whole  extent  of  Barnstable  County  — 


190      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  these  few  are  where  the  foreign  element 
has  recently  settled  in  large  numbers.  There 
are  thirteen  high  schools  in  the  fifteen  towns 
which  make  up  this  county,  and  over  twenty- 
four  thousand  dollars  are  spent  annually  in 
transporting  the  children  to  and  from  various 
neighborhoods  to  these  same  high  schools. 
There  are  about  two  hundred  and  fifty  teachers 
employed,  the  majority  of  them  college  or 
normal-school  graduates.  It  is  easy  to  bewail 
the  fact  that  Cape  Cod  is  yearly  losing  so  many 
of  her  sons  and  daughters  to  the  city,  but 
surely  a  community  which  can  send  its  chil- 
dren out  to  Chicago,  San  Francisco,  and  Lon- 
don, to  take  prominent  parts  in  great  business 
there,  should  not  feel  more  bereft  than  the 
mother,  who,  after  bringing  up  a  healthy  and 
ambitious  family,  sees  it  scatter  to  new  and 
better  fields  of  endeavor.  The  Cape  Cod  boys 
and  girls  have  a  trick  of  moving  away  —  per- 
haps they  inherited  it  from  those  ancestors  who 
sailed  to  China  and  the  Philippines,  coming 
home,  in  due  time,  as  gladly  as  they  had  gone. 
To-day  the  returning  Cape-Codders  come  back 


HARWICH  191 

as  summer  people,  and  in  the  meanwhile  their 
empty  places  have  been  quietly  filled  by  an 
influx  of  aliens  —  dark-eyed  Portuguese  and 
eager  Finns,  Indian  children  and  others  too 
dark  to  claim  that  blood.  The  pedagogical 
machinery  takes  up  this  heterogeneous  mass, 
as  it  took  up  the  children  of  the  Puritans,  and 
hammers  and  moulds  and  grinds  into  shape  — 
pushing  each  generation  a  little  in  advance  of 
the  one  before  it.  In  certain  districts  the  ma- 
chinery labors  a  little,  but  as  yet  the  immigra- 
tion has  not  become  so  overwhelming  as  to 
clog  the  wheels  of  progress. 

Harwich,  besides  having  the  largest  and 
finest  town  hall  on  the  Cape,  and  one  of  the 
most  extensive  village  greens,  —  Brooks  Park, 
—  has  an  admirable  educational  record.  It  is 
here  that  education  receives  the  largest  town 
appropriation,  and  here  that  the  first  agricul- 
tural school  in  Barnstable  County  and  the 
third  in  the  State  was  opened.  It  was  here  that 
Sidney  Brooks  founded  the  Brooks  Seminary 
in  1844  and  served  as  its  head  for  twenty-two 
years.    The  first  vocational  course  offered  in 


192   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

America  was  offered  here,  conducted  by  Sid- 
ney Brooks,  and  was,  quite  fittingly,  a  course 
in  navigation. 

The  Brooks  Seminary  became  the  town  high 
school  in  1883,  and  remains  so  to-day  —  still 
carrying  the  banner  of  progressiveness  high. 
Before  the  enactment  of  the  Act  of  1911,  which 
provided  for  the  establishment  of  agricultural 
departments  in  high  schools  under  State  aid 
and  supervision,  Harwich  petitioned  the  Board 
of  Education  for  such  a  department.  It  was 
granted,  and  established  in  1912,  and  has  done 
much  to  revivify  agricultural  interest  on  the 
lower  Cape.  Furthermore,  when  it  took  part 
in  the  Vocational  Exhibit  at  the  Panama 
Pacific  Exhibition,  it  won  the  Grand  Prize  for 
Massachusetts. 

But  the  passion  for  learning  is  not  confined 
to  one  town.  The  Sandwich  Academy  was  in- 
corporated in  1804,  and  was  a  matter  of  great 
pride  to  the  whole  county  until  it  was  under- 
mined at  last  by  sectarian  differences.  The 
Academy  in  Falmouth  was  founded  in  1835, 
and  the  one  in  Truro  in  1840.  Nor  did  the  in- 


HARWICH  193 

fluence  of  these  zealous  scholars  stop  here. 
Samuel  Lewis,  a  native  of  Falmouth,  was 
known  as  the  father  of  the  common  schools 
of  Ohio,  over  which  he  was  superintendent 
for  fifty  years.  One  likes  to  recall  the  well- 
grounded  and  long-established  reputation  of 
such  schools  and  such  schoolmasters. 

Of  course,  the  most  famous  school  on  the 
Cape  to-day  is  the  Normal  School  at  Hyannis. 
Established  for  twenty  years,  it  has  both  win- 
ter and  summer  courses,  and  to  it  have  come 
many  foreign  students  and  educators,  seeking 
courses  of  study  in  this  country. 

But  to  go  back  to  Harwich.  At  the  time 
when  Harwich  was  incorporated,  in  1694,  it 
had  been  enjoined  by  law  upon  every  town  in 
the  Province,  "having  the  number  of  fifty 
householders  or  upward,"  to  have  a  "school- 
master to  teach  children  and  youth  to  read  and 
write."  Those  having  the  "number  of  a  hun- 
dred families  or  householders "  were  required 
to  have  a  grammar  school  set  up  and  taught 
by  "some  discreet  person  of  good  conversa- 
tion, well  instructed  in  the  tongues."   It  was 


194      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

not  until  1708  that  "enough  famiHes"  were 
found  in  Harwich.  Even  after  the  famiUes 
assembled,  in  the  gradual  course  of  settlement, 
and  Mr.  Asbon  was  selected  as  schoolmaster, 
no  schoolhouse  was  built,  and  the  town  of- 
fered "nine  pence  a  week  for  a  convenient 
house  to  keep  school  in"  —  a  rent  which  ap- 
pears to  have  been  satisfactory,  for  the  school 
evidently  proceeded.  Of  Mr.  Asbon,  teaching 
the  progeny  of  fifty  colonial  families,  —  one 
remembers  with  a  sigh  the  size  of  those  fami- 
lies, —  in  accommodations  procured  by  nine 
pence  a  week,  the  records  are  mercifully  brief. 
But  of  his  successor,  Mr.  Philip  Selew,  we  hear 
a  great  deal.  This  worthy  gentleman  was 
schoolmaster  in  Harwich  for  over  fifty  years, 
receiving  for  his  labors  forty-eight  pounds  a 
year.  Surely  all  the  honors  that  have  since 
gathered  around  his  name  w  ere  only  scant  rec- 
ompense for  a  half -century  of  heroic  toil. 

The  educational  record  of  Harwich  is  not  its 
only  claim  to  distinction.  Originally,  of  course, 
fishing  was  its  chief  occupation.  Sixty  years 
ago  the  water  front  was  alive  with  shipping: 


HARWICH  195 

vessels  came  and  went;  the  wharves  were 
throbbing  with  Ufe;  and  Harwich  capital  was 
largely  invested  in  Harwich  vessels,  built  on 
the  banks  of  Herring  River.  Cranberry  cul- 
ture followed,  and  later  this  prosperous  town, 
named  for  the  old  port  in  Essex  County,  Eng- 
land, supported  within  its  borders  a  sash  and 
blind  factory;  a  tanning  business;  a  watch  busi- 
ness; and  also  a  sail-making  one.  Now  its 
chain  of  fresh-water  lakes,  rich  in  bass,  pick- 
erel, and  perch,  sparkle  a  perpetual  invitation 
to  the  fisherman,  while  the  one  million  dollars 
that  the  town  has  spent  on  its  ninety  miles  of 
highway  during  the  past  thirteen  years,  beckon 
to  the  motorist.  Harwichport,  West  Harwich, 
Harwich  Center,  South  and  East  Harwich, 
are  all  dotted  with  summer  homes.  Transients 
double  the  population  for  six  months  in  the 
year,  and  the  long  beaches  are  bright  with 
bathers  during  the  summer  weeks. 

It  is  not  possible  to  leave  the  subject  of  the 
educational  life  of  the  Cape  without  mention- 
ing the  free  public  library.  Every  traveler 
must  have  noticed  the  handsome  and  com- 


196      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

plete  libraries  in  this  region  —  many  of  them 
gift  or  memorial  buildings.  But  the  branch 
libraries  are  even  more  significant  than  the 
main  ones.  It  is  charming  to  see  some  gray 
cottage  tucked  in  the  friendly  lee  of  a  hill  that 
has  been  its  shelter  for  a  hundred  years  and 
more,  bearing  above  its  ancient  door  the  sign 
"Library."  By  the  side  of  the  road,  or  half- 
way across  the  meadow  or  in  peaceful  nearness 
to  the  local  cemetery,  these  little  "branch  li- 
braries" are  the  inconspicuous  but  vital  centers 
for  culture  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  Cape,  testifying  poignantly  to  the  men- 
tal alertness  of  the  Cape-Codder. 

Those  "trippers"  whose  travels  have  taken 
them  over  foreign  lands  will  have  to  think  a 
long  time  before  they  can  remember  any  coun- 
try where  the  institutions  of  learning  compare 
with  those  which  dot  this  small  section  of  the 
United  States.  Schools  and  libraries  —  free 
to  all  who  will  —  are  an  integral  part  of  the 
atmosphere  and  architecture  of  Cape  Cod. 
We  Americans  are  justified  in  a  proper  pride 
in  the  system  which  keeps  the  fires  of  learning 


HARWICH 


197 


burning  brightly,  and  which  manages  every 
year  to  swallow  a  greater  and  even  greater 
mass  of  raw  material  and  turn  it  out  in  nego- 
tiable human  form. 


--ife*^- 


Chapter  XV 
FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS 

FALMOUTH  — a  town  of  dignity  and 
repute;  a  town  of  handsome  exterior  and 
honorable  sons  and  daughters.  Proud  and 
progressive,  Falmouth  has,  for  two  hundred 
and  thirty  years,  maintained  her  prestige  in 
the  annals  of  Cape  Cod. 

On  your  entrance  to  the  town  you  are  struck 
with  the  air  of  pleasant  prosperity.  The  Village 
Green,  that  touch  of  ''City  Planning"  which, 
for  all  its  naive  associations,  still  remains  an 
incomparably  effective  landscape  touch;  the 
well-built,  well-cared-f or  houses  of  comfortable 
dimensions  and  admirable  proportions;  and  the 
church  with  the  ivy-clad  chapel  by  the  gleam- 
ing pond  —  all  sustain  this  genial  atmosphere. 


^!!  -<  ' 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    199 

Nor  are  these  things  superficial  features. 
They  are  the  proper  expressions  of  a  long  and 
worthy  life.  Falmouth  has  won  her  prestige 
fairly.  Ever  since  she  attained  her  autonomy 
—  in  1686  when  she  and  her  twin  sister  of 
Rochester  became  the  sixty-sixth  and  sixty- 
seventh  Massachusetts  towns  —  she  has  mer- 
ited the  admiration  that  has  flowed  to  her. 

All  Cape  Cod  communities  have  had  their 
experience  with  coasting,  shipbuilding,  whal- 
ing, and  salt-making,  and  Falmouth  is  no  ex- 
ception to  the  rule.  But  in  spite  of  her  excel- 
lent career  in  these  lines  —  extending  over 
one  hundred  and  sixty  years  —  she  has  drawn 
her  life  more  from  the  land  than  from  the 
water.  Very  early  in  her  history  she  established 
herself  agriculturally,  and  opened  the  Fal- 
mouth Bank,  with  a  capital  of  one  hundred 
thousand  dollars,  in  1821.  An  intelligent 
mother,  she  has  spent  liberally  on  her  schools, 
churches,  and  public  buildings,  and  now,  like 
that  mother  with  her  work  well  done,  she  re- 
counts with  modest  but  firm  pride  the  worthy 
records  of  her  sons.   It  is  these  sons,  returning 


200      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

after  years  in  the  busier,  more  distant  places  of 
the  world,  who  were  originally  responsible  for 
the  colonies  of  summer  houses  which  encircle 
the  town  on  every  side.  There  is  much  wealth 
here  —  although  unostentatiously  displayed; 
many  traditions,  quietly  but  tenaciously  pre- 
served. It  is  this  social  order,  squarely  built 
upon  the  substantial  foundations  of  upright 
living,  that  makes  a  civic  structure  of  definite 
value  and  beauty. 

The  Old  Colony  Records  of  1686  call  Fal- 
mouth "  Suckannesset,"  but  the  dearer  Eng- 
Ush  name  of  the  famous  seaport  in  Cornwall 
was  soon  given  her  by  English-speaking 
tongues.  Although  her  history  as  a  town  does 
not  actually  begin  until  1686,  yet  twenty-five 
years  earlier  than  that  there  were  houses  built 
near  Salt  and  Fresh  Ponds.  The  inhabitants 
of  one  of  these  houses  —  the  Hatches  —  an- 
chored on  the  evening  of  their  arrival  among 
the  tall  flags  of  the  pond.  There  the  first 
white  child  born  in  Falmouth  saw  the  light, 
and  in  honor  of  the  rushes  which  had  been  his 
cradle  was  appropriately  named  Moses. 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    201 

The  town  drew  its  population  from  Barn- 
stable, Plymouth,  and  Sandwich,  and  it  brings 
the  past  suddenly  close  to  glance  at  the  names 
of  those  first  settlers  and  see  how  many  of 
them  are  familiar  to-day  in  this  vicinity  — 
Gifford,  Lawrence,  Nye,  Dimmick,  Swift, 
Phinney,  Robinson,  Davis.  For  all  its  impor- 
tations and  exportations,  these  names  and  a 
few  others  still  remain  a  part  of  the  local  life, 
sustaining  the  continuity  of  background  and 
association  through  the  years. 

For  quite  a  while  after  they  settled  here 
many  of  these  stanch  pioneers  kept  up  their 
connection  with  the  church  at  the  Great 
Marshes  —  the  prettier  name  for  Barnstable. 
We  to-day,  with  automobiles  and  railroads 
at  our  door,  and  finding  it  diflScult  to  get  to 
church  at  all,  pause  for  a  moment,  wondering, 
at  that  old-fashioned  eflSciency  which  made  it 
possible  for  men  to  build  houses  and  ships  and 
roads,  to  defend  their  country  from  wolves  and 
weather  and  a  foreign  army,  and  still  ''main- 
tain their  connection"  with  a  church  a  long 
half-day's  drive  away.    However,  this  aflfiUa- 


202      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

tion  was  not  necessary  very  long;  in  a  year 
Falmouth  had  its  own  place  of  worship  and  its 
own  preacher. 

Salutary  as  the  establishment  of  a  local 
church  always  is,  yet  in  this  case  one  is  inclined 
to  believe  that  the  town  owes  much  of  its 
temperate  living  and  kindly  humanity  to  quite 
another  source,  the  Quakers,  who  still  maintain 
their  meeting-house  on  the  main  road  to  Fal- 
mouth Town,  and  still  infuse  their  peace  into 
the  fevered  life  of  a  hurrying  age.  Shamefully 
treated  by  Sandwich,^  the  inoffensive  sect 
timidly  sought  an  entrance  into  the  shelter 
of  this  more  liberal  community  a  few  years 
after  the  first  settlers.  A  mild  and  peaceful 
folk,  they  were  accepted  as  friends  and  citizens 
immediately,  and  even  ** cleared"  of  a  minis- 
terial tax  —  an  unheard-of  concession  in  those 
orthodox  days.  Their  gray  meeting-house,  un- 
adorned by  belfry  or  turret,  stands  tranquilly 
by  the  side  of  the  State  road,  with  the  open 
sheds,  where  the  horses  are  tied  during  service, 
still  in  use,  although  to-day  more  automobiles 

^  See  chapter  iii. 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    203 

than  horses  fill  them.  Behind  and  at  one  side 
on  the  slope  of  the  hill  is  the  gravej^ctrd  dotted 
with  small  stones,  —  all  gray,  all  uniform,  — 
the  lack  of  worldly  rivalry  fittingly  expressed 
in  the  last  habitation  which  these  saintly  folk 
have  built  with  hands.  Methodism  —  the 
"religion  of  the  frontier  and  the  backwoods" 
as  Phelps  has  called  it  —  is  the  most  popular 
denomination  on  the  Cape,  although  one  sees 
an  Episcopalian  or  Baptist,  and  of  later  years 
a  Roman  Catholic,  edifice  more  and  more 
frequently.  But  the  Friends'  Meeting-House, 
built  in  1842  in  its  frame  of  cheerful  grave- 
yard, breathes  a  unique  benediction  upon  this 
township.  It  may  be  due  to  this  influence 
that,  in  spite  of  the  sad  and  cruel  lists  of  mis- 
deeds toward  the  Indians  which  blot  the  pages 
of  Massachusetts  history,  not  one  of  them  can 
be  traced  to  Falmouth.  She  bought  her  land 
honestly  and  paid  for  it  fairly;  her  personal  re- 
lations with  the  Indians  were  uniformly  just; 
the  Indian  burial-ground  on  the  hilltop  over- 
looking a  pond  was  reverenced  and  unmo- 
lested for  over  two  hundred  years.  Thus,  one 


204      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

more  strand  of  contentment  was  woven  into 
the  felicitous  woof  of  this  happy  local  chron- 
icle. 

The  happiest  nations,  like  the  happiest 
women,  says  George  Eliot,  have  no  history. 
In  a  sense  this  is  true  of  Falmouth.  She  has 
escaped  fire,  pestilence,  and  calamity;  her 
books  are  clear  of  any  grievous  offense.  Even 
in  the  Revolution,  when  she  was  twice  bom- 
barded by  the  British,  and  when,  as  in  the 
Civil  War,  she  gave  most  generously  of  money 
and  of  men,  she  did  not  suffer  violence.  To  be 
sure,  in  1773  there  was  an  epidemic  which  at- 
tacked the  oysters,  and,  in  spite  of  palliative 
efforts,  extinguished  their  existence  in  this  vi- 
cinity. And  later  there  was  a  harrowing  con- 
troversy to  decide  whether  the  alewives  should 
have  the  right  of  way  to  Coonenosset  Pond. 
This  affair  became  so  bitter  that  a  cannon  in 
charge  of  the  anti-herring  party  was  prema- 
turely discharged,  killing  the  gunner  and  the 
controversy  at  the  same  time.  Also,  again  in 
early  days,  every  householder  was  required  to 
"kill  six  old  and  twelve  young  blackbirds,  or 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    205 

four  jays  and  deliver  them  to  the  selectmen 
or  pay  3^  for  delinquency."  Occasionally 
wolves  needed  sanguinary  attention.  But, 
read  in  the  lenient  light  of  history,  these 
slaughters  seem  very  light  indeed,  compared 
to  the  enforced  savageries  of  many  a  Puritan 
town. 

Falmouth  has  never  been  conspicuous  in 
commercial  or  maritime  undertakings.  No 
mighty  ships  were  ever  launched  here;  the  glass 
works  followed  the  salt-works  into  easy  obliv- 
ion. It  has  raised  good  English  hay  —  more 
than  other  townships;  it  has  incorporated  a 
system  of  diking  to  convert  much  of  the  salt 
marsh  into  meadow  land;  and  it  has  always 
had  time  to  emphasize  the  pleasure  and  the 
profit  of  virtuous  living. 

The  New  England  town  at  its  best  is  one 
of  the  most  charming  settlements  in  Chris- 
tendom; and  here  we  have  it  at  its  best.  There 
are  numerous  small  hamlets  and  colonies  in 
the  twelve-mile  township  of  Falmouth.  Chapa- 
quoit  is  one  of  the  most  fashionable  resorts  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard;  Falmouth 


206      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Heights  one  of  the  most  popular.  And  these, 
as  well  as  the  country  sisters,  such  as  North 
Falmouth  and  Hatch ville,  are  all  tinctured  with 
the  gracious  personality  of  their  mother  town. 

Professor  James  Winthrop,  of  Harvard, 
coming  down  by  chaise  to  survey  this  portion 
of  the  Cape  in  1791,  mentions  Falmouth  as  a 
pleasant  town,  "but  out  of  repair."  In  highly 
intelligent  fashion  she  has  extracted  both  the 
sweetness  and  the  stimulant  from  this  ancient 
criticism.  She  is  still  the  pleasantest  of  all  the 
pleasant  towns,  and  no  longer  could  those 
swept  and  garnished  streets  —  well  shaded  and 
well  oiled  —  be  called  "out  of  repair."  For  un- 
pretentious as  these  may  appear,  one  will  do 
well  to  remember  that  Falmouth  ranks  sixth  in 
wealth  among  all  the  towns  of  Massachusetts, 
her  tax  valuation  in  1914  being  $16,554,745, 
exceeded  only  by  Brookline,  Milton,  Wellesley, 
Winchester,  and  Manchester. 

One  should  not  leave  Falmouth  without  tak- 
ing the  four-mile  drive  to  Wood's  Hole,  dis- 
tinguished in  the  nineteenth  century  as  a  whal- 
ing  and    shipbuilding   station.     The   Pacific 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    207 

Guano  Company  had  its  headquarters  here, 
and  was  the  magnet  which,  in  1879,  drew  the 
long  iron  rails  of  the  Old  Colony  Railroad 
down  to  this  remote  corner.  Under  another 
name  it  carries  many  a  passenger  nowadays 
to  catch  the  boat  to  Nantucket  or  to  New  Bed- 
ford, or  to  bring  him  back  from  his  holiday  at 
Martha's  Vineyard. 

But  even  if  you  have  no  intention  of  taking 
the  boat  from  Wood's  Hole,  you  should  not 
miss  going  there  for  a  few  hours,  to  see  its  rose 
garden  and  its  Marine  Biological  Station. 

You  will  come  to  the  rose  garden  first,  and 
although  it  is  private  property  you  are  quite 
welcome  to  open  the  rustic  gate  and  walk  in, 
stay  as  long  as  you  please,  and  wander  where 
you  will.  There  are  two  acres  of  roses  here: 
teas,  ramblers,  climbers,  trailers;  tiny  little 
yellow  buds;  great  cabbagy  pink  ones;  there  is 
an  arbor  and  a  pergola  draped  with  the  Evan- 
geline; and  the  pink  and  crimson  ramblers 
clamber  over  the  buildings  like  laughing  pick- 
aninnies swarming  over  a  fence.  Here  stands 
a  pure  white  rose  —  calm  marmoreal,  faultless; 


208      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

there  flames  a  scarlet  one;  and  yonder  palest 
pink  melts  into  palest  yellow.  Here  at  your 
feet  is  a  brilliant  host  of  cerise  and  salmon, 
red  and  cream,  tended  by  kneeling  men  who 
know  the  foliage  as  well  as  the  blossom  of  each 
particular  one  of  the  thousand  bushes.  People 
come  from  all  over  the  w  orld  —  from  Florida 
and  Oregon  and  Canada  and  Australia  and 
France  —  to  study  these  roses  and  to  place 
their  orders  for  bushes.  And  you,  even  if  you 
have  no  order  to  give,  but  only  a  few  minutes 
to  spare  in  communion  with  beauty  —  you  are 
quite  welcome  also.  If  you  were  in  Holland, 
you  would  not  think  of  passing  by  one  of 
the  famous  tulip  nurseries.  If  you  "sight-see" 
in  America,  you  should  pause  by  the  gate  of 
Miss  Fay's  rose  garden  in  Wood's  Hole:  pause, 
then  lift  the  latch,  and  enter. 

As  for  the  Marine  Biological  Laboratory,  it 
is  quite  as  fascinating  in  its  way  as  the  rose 
garden.  If  you  are  of  a  serious  turn  of  mind 
you  may  be  interested  to  know  something 
about  its  origin,  its  purpose,  and  its  accom- 
plishment; if  you  are  merely  curious,  you  will 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    209 

like  to  loiter  for  a  quarter-hour  in  the  small 
public  aquarium  where  certain  specimens  are 
kept.  Perhaps  even  the  seriously  minded  will 
stop  here  for  a  few  moments  before  turning  to 
the  less  pictorial  departments  of  the  institu- 
tion. For  it  is  always  amusing  to  watch  fish 
through  glass,  which  shows  you  the  surface  of 
the  water  from  the  under  side  instead  of  from 
the  top.  Always  amusing  to  see  the  skate  — 
as  flat  as  paper  against  the  glass;  the  dogfish, 
silver  greyhounds  of  the  ocean,  and  the  squid, 
like  shrouded  ladies,  moving  first  forward  and 
then  back,  their  translucent  veils  undulating 
behind  them.  The  puffers  are  tremendously 
important  creatures,  and  in  that  case  beyond 
the  minnows  are  as  thick  as  Fords  on  a  Sun- 
day afternoon.  The  jeweled-eyed  sea-robins, 
muffled  in  their  orange-colored  fins  and  gills, 
remind  one  of  a  frivolous  girl  lapped  in  red  fox 
furs,  that  flutter  as  she  walks.  And  what  an 
ominousness  about  the  sharks  that  go 

"sailing  by  — 
Sail  and  sail  with  unshut  eye  — 
Round  the  world  for  ever  and  aye." 


210      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

Through  the  next  door  is  the  museum,  and 
here  to  the  uninitiated  eye  the  rows  of  glass 
jars,  with  their  strange  preserved  specimens  of 
sponge,  jellyfish,  coral,  and  seaweeds,  seem 
like  vessels  in  some  unholy  kitchen — where  dia- 
bolical fruits  and  ghastly  condiments  are  await- 
ing the  feast  of  a  Frankenstein. 

This  Marine  Biological  Station,  like  the  one 
at  Beaufort,  North  Carolina,  and  at  Fairport, 
on  the  Mississippi  River,  in  Iowa,  is  under  the 
direct  control  of  the  Bureau  of  Fisheries,  Wash- 
ington. Although  many  important  investiga- 
tions were  carried  out  here  during  the  early 
years  of  the  Bureau,  it  was  not  until  1883  that 
the  present  permanent  establishment  was 
created.  Now  there  is  a  hatchery  and  labora- 
tory building,  a  residence  for  the  superintend- 
ent and  the  director  of  the  laboratory  and  the 
scientific  staff  during  the  summer,  a  pump- 
house  and  coal-shed,  a  workshop  and  store- 
house, and  extensive  wharves  enclosing  a  stone 
basin.  One  or  more  steam  vessels  are  detailed 
to  the  station,  and  there  is  ample  equipment  of 
launches  and  small  boats.  The  scientific  work 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    211 

is  largely  achieved  during  the  summer,  and 
for  the  remainder  of  the  year  the  station  is 
devoted  to  fish  culture.  This  fish  culture  is 
carried  on  in  the  large  room  which  is  at  the  left 
as  you  enter  the  building.  Any  one  may  enter, 
but  probably  only  those  who  have  had  special 
training  will  understand  the  hatching  appa- 
ratus unless  it  is  explained  to  them.  During 
the  summer  you  are  not  so  likely  to  see  the 
machinery  in  working  order.  You  may,  how- 
ever, study  the  hatching-tables,  each  one  of 
which  is  provided  with  twelve  compartments. 
Each  compartment  has  two  partitions  near  the 
ends:  one  fixed,  the  other  movable.  Between 
the  two  is  a  box  with  a  scrim  bottom  in  which 
the  eggs  are  placed.  Sea-water  from  the  sup- 
ply pipes  is  led  through  the  rubber  tubing  to 
the  small  space  cut  off  by  the  fixed  partition, 
and,  passing  through  a  hole  in  the  latter  and 
a  corresponding  hole  in  the  egg  box,  spreads 
over  the  eggs  and  passes  out  through  the  scrim 
bottom.  The  movable  partition,  which  does 
not  quite  reach  to  the  bottom  of  the  compart- 
ment, cuts  off  a  space  at  the  other  end,  in 


212      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

which  is  located  a  standpipe  extending  not 
quite  to  the  top  of  the  compartment.  This  is 
covered  by  a  cyhndrical  cap  of  large  diameter, 
the  two  together  forming  a  siphon.  The  in- 
flowing water,  after  passing  among  the  eggs, 
fills  the  compartment  to  the  top  of  the  stand- 
pipe,  when  it  is  rapidly  siphoned  off  until  the 
bottom  of  the  cap  is  exposed  and  the  siphon 
flow  is  broken.  Thus,  about  every  seven  min- 
utes the  compartments  are  filled  and  nearly 
half  emptied,  the  surface  of  the  water  rising 
and  falling  like  the  tide,  and  suggesting  the 
name,  "tidal  box,"  by  which  this  apparatus 
is  known.  Cod  is  the  principal  fish  hatched 
here,  as  this  fish  spawns  along  the  coast  of  New 
England  and  on  the  offshore  banks  from  Nov- 
ember to  April.  The  eggs,  of  which  nearly 
ten  million  may  be  produced  by  a  seventy-five- 
pound  fish,  are  about  one  eighteenth  of  an 
inch  in  diameter.  The  eggs  for  hatching  are 
procured  either  by  the  ** Norwegian  method" 
or  by  "stripping."  About  426,000  of  them  are 
placed  in  each  hatching-box,  in  a  layer  one  and 
one  half  inches  deep,  and  the  tidal  current  of 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    213 

water  is  maintained  constantly  until  they 
hatch  —  an  average  period  of  fifteen  days. 
After  they  hatch,  the  fry  are  carried  by  boats 
to  various  parts  of  Vineyard  Sound  and  Buz- 
zard's Bay,  and  carefully  emptied  into  the 
water,  where  they  undergo  their  future  devel- 
opment under  natural  conditions. 

In  the  year  1913-14,  82,000,000  cod,  373,- 
000,000  flounders,  and  2,500,000  mackerel  were 
hatched  in  this  station  and  planted  in  the  ad- 
jacent waters.  Sea-bass,  tautog,  scup,  and 
lobster  have  also  been  hatched.  When  we  con- 
sider the  high  cost  of  living,  and  the  fact  that 
the  annual  value  of  the  fishery  products  of 
Alaska  is  about  twenty  million  dollars  (or  over 
two  and  a  half  times  the  original  cost  of  the 
territory  to  the  United  States),  we  see  the 
direct  economic  as  well  as  scientific  value  of 
such  a  station  as  this. 

In  addition  to  the  hatchery,  there  is  also  a 
large  laboratory,  a  small  chemical  laboratory, 
and  a  number  of  individual  research  rooms;  all 
sorts  of  nets,  seines,  and  collecting  apparatus, 
and  a  very  fine  library,  where  about  fifteen 


214      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

or  twenty  investigators  are  busy  all  summer 
long. 

Besides  the  Marine  Biological  Station  at 
Wood's  Hole,  a  great  deal  of  gayety  and  out- 
door informal  good  time  is  brought  to  the  town 
by  the  Marine  Biological  Association,  where 
about  a  hundred  and  fifty  men  and  girls,  young 
doctors  and  all  sorts  of  research  workers,  con- 
gregate for  study  during  the  summer  months. 
While  not  organically  connected  with  the  sta- 
tion, the  two  institutions  cooperate  in  many 
ways,  and  as  a  result,  the  marine  life  of  the 
Wood's  Hole  region  is  more  fully  and  accurately 
known  than  that  of  any  other  region  of  simi- 
lar extent  on  the  western  shore  of  the  Atlantic. 
In  fact,  there  are  few  regions  anywhere  in  the 
world  where  such  knowledge  is  more  complete. 
Of  marine  animals  alone  approximately  seven- 
teen hundred  species  are  listed  from  Vineyard 
Sound  and  Buzzard's  Bay,  and  the  marine 
plants  are  correspondingly  numerous.  There 
is  something  that  reminds  one  of  a  Greek  fable 
in  this  community  of  studious  and  yet  social 
men  and  women,  spending  the  summer  on  the 


FALMOUTH  THE  PROSPEROUS    215 

shore  of  a  classic  coast,  working  diligently  to 
solve  the  question  of  general  habits  and  dis- 
tribution of  fish;  the  regulation  and  conserva- 
tion of  the  fisheries;  the  investigation  of  fish- 
ery by-products;  the  extraction  of  oils  and 
gelatins  from  the  waste  products;  and  the 
effect  of  various  industrial  water  pollutions  on 
economic  marine  animals. 

What  more  fitting  place  for  such  a  study 
than  here,  where  for  hundreds  of  years  the 
community  made  its  living  from  the  labor  of 
those  earlier  devotees  of  ocean  life  —  those 
bronzed  sea  captains  and  sturdy  fishermen 
and  all  the  goodly  crew  of  Cape  Cod  mariners, 
who,  like  those  other  ancients,  "went  down 
to  the  sea  in  ships"? 


Chapter  XVI 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND 

IT  lies,  like  a  shallow  glass  bowl  of  clear 
water,  a  rim  of  snowy  sand  encircling  it 
with  the  prettiest  of  borders.  On  three  sides 
rise  the  gentle  hills,  folding  themselves  away 
in  veils  of  haze.  On  the  fourth  side  curves  the 
country  road,  half  hidden  by  the  thick  shrub- 
bery; only  the  shrubbery  is  cut  open  in  two 
places  near  the  road  to  make  an  entrance  for 
the  thirsty  horse.  In  the  autumn  the  copper 
and  bronze  foliage  is  reflected  in  its  burnished 
surface;  in  the  spring  the  seed  pods  drop  off 
and  drift  across  the  unruffled  translucence. 
The  sun  glints  across  it;  the  stars  smile  into 
it;  and  on  quiet  nights  the  moon  unrolls  a  long 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND  217 

wide  path  of  silver  from  end  to  end.    Pond- 
lilies  float  in  the  sheltered  cove,  and  here  and 
there  the  sharp  fin  of  a  leaping  fish  cuts  the 
thin   surface.     Sometimes   a   solitary   bather 
pushes  his  way  through  the  swamp  honey- 
suckle, and  wades  out  into  the  delicious  cool- 
ness; more  often  fishermen,  in  an  old-fashioned 
rowboat,  rip,  with  its  keel,  a  noiseless  and 
quickly  obliterated  seam  in  the  sleek  silk  ex- 
panse. During  the  day  an  occasional  passer- 
by, jogging  along  in  his  country  buggy,  stops 
and  drives  his  horse  and  wagon  down  to  the 
edge,  then  urging  the  beast  on  into  the  water 
itself,  gives  him  time  to  drink,  and  to  gaze 
reflectively   at    the    hills.     Then,   making    a 
half -circle,  with  water  up  to  the  hubs,  —  he 
drives  out  again  a  few  rods  farther  on.   Deer 
come,  too,  and  lesser  woodland  folk,  shy  and 
eager. 

Linger  here  a  moment  by  this  unnamed 
pond  in  the  midst  of  the  woods,  and  let  the 
warm  sand  —  as  fine  and  white  as  that  upon 
the  ocean  shore,  although  the  ocean  is  miles 
from  here  —  run  through  your  fingers.    You 


218      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

are  in  communion  with  one  of  the  most  char- 
acteristic and  lovely  of  Cape  Cod  secrets. 

When  Thoreau  took  his  walk  down  one  side 
of  the  Cape  and  up  the  other,  he  saw  little  of 
the  inland  country.  He  does  not  even  mention 
the  frequency  and  extraordinary  beauty  of 
these  unexpected  sheets  of  water.  And  yet 
there  is  no  region  in  Massachusetts  more 
brightly  jeweled  in  this  way  than  is  Barnstable 
County.  There  are  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
four  ponds  —  of  over  ten  acres  in  area  —  in 
this  small  section :  two  of  them  are  of  one  hun- 
dred acres,  and  three  are  of  seven  hundred 
acres.  There  are  twenty-seven  in  the  township 
of  Barnstable  alone,  and  no  town  has  less  than 
five.  Nor  does  this  enumeration  include  the 
hundreds  of  pondlets  —  tinier  but  by  no 
means  less  bewitching  —  very  like  this  one 
where  we  are  now  sitting.  Such  dimples  of 
limpid  water  fleck  the  Cape  everywhere,  often 
surrounded  by  rolling  meadow  or  pasture  land, 
divided  by  a  fence  rail  that  runs  twenty  feet 
or  so  into  the  water,  to  keep  separate  the  cows 
from  different  farms.  Often  a  farmhouse  with 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND         219 

its  barns  and  sheds  stands  on  a  hilltop  over- 
looking the  water,  making  a  picture  idyllic  in 
the  extreme.  You  have  not  seen  Cape  Cod  un- 
less you  have  taken  time  to  walk  to  some  such 
intimate  spot  and  sit  for  a  long  half -hour  and 
listen  to  the  sounds  of  the  forest  life  around 
you,  and  see  the  shadows  of  clouds  and  trees 
dissolve  and  form  again  in  the  flawless  mirror. 
Botanists  have  studied  this  peculiarity  of  Cape 
Cod  with  minute  and  loving  attention;  and  the 
fruit  of  their  research  is  full  of  flavor. 

The  smaller  ponds  usually  lie  in  an  amphi- 
theater, and  have  neither  outlet  nor  inlet.  The 
bottom  and  shore  are  commonly  of  white  sand, 
and  the  water  crystal  clear.  They  are  spring- 
fed,  and  there  is  an  overflow  through  the  upper 
loose  soil  by  percolation.  Undoubtedly  many 
of  the  fresh-water  ponds  which  are  near  sea- 
level  were  originally  inlets  from  the  sea,  cut 
off  by  the  formation  of  sandbars  at  their 
mouths.  Some  are  still  near  enough  to  get  the 
tang  of  ocean  spray  splashed  into  them  on  a 
high  wind.  The  annual  rainfall  has  made  them 
fresh.    When  we  realize  that  the  annual  rain 


2^0      CAPE  COD  NEAV  AND  OLD 

supply  amounts  to  forty  inches  a  year  for  such 
sheets  of  water,  and  that  an  inch  of  rain  upon 
an  acre  of  water  surface  amounts  to  one  hun- 
dred tons,  it  is  easy  to  see  how  the  annual  sup- 
ply of  four  thousand  tons  would  freshen  any 
land-locked  lake.  But  although  they  are  fresh, 
they  still  retain  enough  common  and  other 
mineral  salts  to  give  them  a  peculiarly  bril- 
liant sparkle  and  a  pleasant  taste  —  quite  un- 
like the  flatness  of  rain  or  distilled  water.  This 
quantity  of  salt  is  very  minute  —  about  one 
thousandth  as  much  as  in  sea-water.  If  it 
becomes  more  —  as,  for  instance,  one  tenth 
of  one  per  cent  —  the  water  is  brackish.  It  is 
interesting  to  trace  the  diminution  of  chlorine 
as  one  leaves  the  coast  and  journeys  inland. 

Thus,  Shank  Painter  Pond,  in  Provincetown, 
has  almost  three  times  as  much  chlorine  as  has 
Long  Pond  or  Ashumet  in  Falmouth.  The  ac- 
companying table  shows  the  consistency  of 
this  theory. 

The  elevation  of  the  ponds  is  also  worthy 
of  mention.  The  highest  is  Peter's  in  Sandwich. 
It  has  an  elevation  of  ninety  feet.  Then  come 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND 


221 


Name  of  pond 

Location 

Area 

Amount  of 
chlorine 

Shank  Painter 

Clapp's  Pond 

Great  Pond 

Provincetown 

Provincetown 

Eastham 

Brewster 

Barnstable 

]\fashpee 

Mashpee 

Falmouth 

Falmouth 

83 

72 
112 
700 
770 
240 
225 
205 

2:42 
2:39 
1:98 

Long  Pond 

1:44 

Nine-Mile  Pond 

Mashpee  Lake 

John's  Pond 

1:05 
:85 
:81 

Ashumet 

:77 

Long  Pond 

:87 

Mashpee,  Spectacle,  Triangle  and  Lawrence 
Ponds  in  Sandwich,  with  elevations  of  sixty 
to  eighty  feet.  Cotuit,  Ashubael,  and  Round 
Ponds  in  Barnstable  and  Mill  Pond  in  Brew- 
ster have  about  thirty  feet.  Mill  and  FoUin's 
Ponds,  tributaries  of  Bass  River  in  Yarmouth, 
Long  and  Swan  Ponds  in  Yarmouth,  Swan 
Pond  in  Dennis,  Long  Pond  in  Brewster,  and 
Hinckley's  Pond  in  Harwich  have  elevations 
of  from  ten  to  twenty  feet.  Few  of  the  larger 
ponds  of  the  easterly  towns  of  the  Cape  have 
an  elevation  of  more  than  fifteen  feet  above  the 


sea. 


Another  curious  point  which  always  seems 


222   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

quite  incredible  is  this:  similar  as  these  ponds 
may  be  to  the  casual  observer,  both  in  size  and 
conformation,  every  single  one  is  distinctive 
in  its  algse  and  its  microscopic  flora.  Even  in 
ponds  separated  by  a  ridge  of  barely  half  a 
mile,  —  as  in  Ashumet  and  John's  Ponds,  — 
the  naturalist  will  find  totally  different  assort- 
ments of  animal  and  vegetable  life.  Such  is  the 
individuality  that  Nature  so  jealously  main- 
tains, even  in  her  geographical  and  topo- 
graphical offspring. 

The  largest,  deepest,  and  most  beautiful  of 
all  freshwater  bodies  on  the  Cape  are  those  of 
Mashpee  and  Wakeby  —  two  incomparable 
lakes,  only  partially  separated  from  each  other 
by  Canaumet  Neck,  a  piece  of  land  owned  by 
President  Lowell,  of  Harvard,  and  undoubt- 
edly the  most  superb  piece  of  woodland  in  the 
whole  county.  Here  one  finds  beech  trees  with 
a  spread  of  fifty  feet,  their  smooth  barks  gleam- 
ing against  the  white  of  the  sand  and  the  blue 
of  the  water.  Here  one  finds  a  solemn  cathe- 
dral grove  through  which  the  sunlight  filters 
as   through  majestic   stained-glass  windows. 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND         223 

Here  are  stretches  of  beach  as  white  as  snow- 
drift, pretty  bluffs  and  glossy  thickets.  Here 
it  was  that  Grover  Cleveland  and  Joseph  Jef- 
ferson used  to  love  to  come  and  fish,  and  many 
a  humbler  angler  since  then  has  enjoyed  as 
keen  a  delight  upon  these  tranquil  waters. 
There  are  three  little  round  islands  in  Mashpee 
Lake,  wooded  to  the  rim,  and  rising  in  a  soft 
conical  peak  in  the  center,  like  decorative 
features  in  an  imaginary  landscape,  quite  as 
lovely  as  Ellen's  Isle  that  Sir  Walter  Scott  has 
made  immortal.  They  are  the  goals  for  ad- 
venturous swimmers,  picnic  spots  for  fisher- 
men, and  a  final  touch  of  enchantment  for 
spectators  from  the  shore. 

For  many  years  these  perfect  lakes  —  mak- 
ing a  region  as  entrancing  as  that  of  the  Eng- 
lish Lake  District  —  were  almost  unknown  to 
any  except  the  canny  fishermen,  who  made  no 
haste  to  share  them  with  the  world.  But  they 
have  been  discovered  now,  and  the  woodland 
about  the  border  —  bearing  trees  quite  dif- 
ferent in  their  sheltered  loftiness  from  the 
wind-twisted  ones  near  the  ocean  —  has  been 


224      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

quietly  bought  up.  One  by  one  mansions  are 
springing  up  near  the  shore,  concealed  behind 
a  leafy  screen,  and  the  green  bow  of  a  canoe 
pulled  up  under  the  shade  of  a  beech  tree  and 
the  thread  of  smoke  from  some  hidden  camp 
betray  that  the  summer  visitor  is  here. 

Go  where  you  will  on  Cape  Cod,  you  will 
never  be  far  from  a  wood-enshrouded  or  a  pas- 
ture-framed pond  or  lake.  Often  you  will  find 
a  shady  beach  in  the  heart  of  a  forest  patch; 
and  often  a  tangle  of  sweet  swamp  growth 
fringing  the  moor  that  shelves  down  to  an  old 
mill  pond. 

You  may  bathe  or  picnic  here  with  impu- 
nity. You  may  fish  if  you  choose,  and  you  will 
find  the  people  who  live  in  the  neighboring 
house  and  who  own  the  rowboat  generous  with 
the  loaning  of  it.  Pickerel  is  preeminently  the 
fish  of  the  fresh  water  of  the  Cape,  but  you 
will  find  quick-mouthed  bass,  perch,  and,  in 
the  streams,  trout.  But  do  not  build  a  fire  as 
you  may  have  built  it  in  other  woods.  The 
Cape  has  been  ravaged  too  many  times  by 
flames,  and  the  miles  and  miles  of  gaunt  spec- 


BY  A  CAPE  COD  POND         225 

tral  trees,  blackened  and  tortured  out  of  all 
shape,  are  mute  warnings  against  the  careless 
match  or  the  flying  spark  and  are  explana- 
tions of  the  rigor  of  the  forest  regulations. 

It  all  lies  before  you  for  your  pleasure  —  the 
fairy  pools  and  shimmering  lakes  clasped  in 
the  tender  embrace  of  greenery.  They  yield  to 
the  easy  demands  of  the  cranberry  dike  and 
submit  with  meekness  to  the  ploughing  of  the 
fisherman's  keel.  But  they  are  only  shallow 
things  at  best.  Even  if  they  were  near  enough 
to  be  accessible  to  the  cities  of  eastern  Massa- 
chusetts, the  great  pumps  of  the  Boston  Water 
Works  and  of  Chestnut  Hill  could  empty  them 
in  a  few  days.  Not  one  of  them  has  a  contrib- 
uting watershed  or  is  fed  by  a  stream  of  suf- 
ficient size  to  furnish  the  needs  of  a  metro- 
pohtan  population.  But  they  will  always  be 
part  of  the  welcome  that  Cape  Cod  extends  to 
her  children  and  to  her  children's  friends  — 
forever  a  delight  to  those  who  know  them  well 
and  to  those  who  chance  upon  them  for  the 
first  time. 


Chapter  XVII 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER  OF  CAPE  COD^ 

A  RAGGED  pile  of  sticks  by  the  side  of 
the  meandering  road  —  long  sticks  and 
short  sticks;  green  sticks  and  rotten  sticks; 
every  villager  who  passes  flings  a  branch  or 
a  stone  upon  the  *' Indian's  Tavern."  The 
dark-eyed  children,  shy  and  foreign-looking, 
cannot  tell  you  why,  even  when  they  are  rac- 
ing by  at  top  speed,  they  are  invariably  and 
irresistibly  impelled  to  pick  up  a  twig,  and,  as 
they  run,  to  toss  it  on  the  uncouth  heap.  And 
neither  can  their  mothers  tell  you,  or  their 

1  This  sketch  of  Mashpee  was  written  by  my  mother,  Rosa- 
mond Pentecost  Rothery,  and  appeared  in  the  Bourne  In- 
dependent in  1903. 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        227 

fathers,  or  their  grandparents.  And  yet  here, 
in  this  forgotten  corner  of  Cape  Cod,  is  thus 
automatically  preserved  the  last  fragment  of 
an  ancient  Indian  rite.  This  pile  of  rubbish  at 
the  crossroads  is  the  lineal  descendant  of  the 
Sacrificial  Rock,  about  which  the  American 
Indians  have  cherished  an  immemorial  tradi- 
tion —  too  vague  to  have  been  translated,  but 
deeply  enough  rooted  to  have  been  for  centu- 
ries unbrokenly  maintained. 

This  curious  custom,  this  mystical  "In- 
dian's Tavern,"  is  only  one  of  the  strange 
sights  that  await  you  if  you  will  penetrate  into 
the  quaint  town  of  Mashpee.  It  is  a  queer, 
quiet  little  place,  inland,  —  as  much  as  any- 
thing can  be  inland  on  Cape  Cod,  —  which, 
as  early  as  1650,  was  set  aside  as  an  Indian 
reservation.  Now,  though  no  longer  a  reserva- 
tion, and  with  its  ten  thousand  acres  slipping 
gradually  into  the  possession  of  the  white  man, 
it  still  retains  a  surprising  flavor  of  distinction. 

Although  automobilists  constantly  whizz  by 
on  the  excellent  State  road,  few  know  enough 
to  turn  aside  a  little,  and  detect,  straggling 


228   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

through  the  wood,  the  primitive  hamlet,  with 
I  its  small  gray  houses,  —  placed  with  a  fine  dis- 
regard to  the  building  line  or  the  future,  —  its 
crystal  lake,  —  loveliest  on  Cape  Cod,  —  and 
its  dark-skinned,  handsome  folk,  with  the  in- 
scrutable poise  which  characterizes  the  In- 
dian, and  the  lustrous  eyes  which  betray  an 
African  tincture.  There  are  plenty  of  good 
Cape-Codders  who  have  never  been  to  Mash- 
pee,  although  it  is  only  half  a  dozen  miles  from 
Sandwich,  not  much  farther  from  Falmouth 
and  Bourne,  a  gentle  ride  from  Cotuit  and 
Osterville,  and  near  to  Plymouth  in  both  age 
and  story.  People  from  Buzzard's  Bay  pos- 
sibly do  not  dare  to  thread  the  bewildering 
roads  which  crisscross  the  scorched  woods 
encircling  the  charmed  section.  But  the  fisher- 
men know  it  well,  for  here  in  the  spring  the 
jeweled  trout  flits  through  the  twisting  river 
and  the  flashing  bass  and  polished  pickerel  leap 
to  —  and  from  —  the  hook  of  the  lucky  man 
who  hires  a  fishing  privilege.  Grover  Cleve- 
land knew  Mashpee  Lake  joining  Wakeby, 
around   a  peerless  promontory,   and   so  did 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        229 

Joseph  Jefferson,  and  a  score  of  other  eminent 
men,  of  whom  pleasant  memories  still  linger 
among  the  friendly  natives.  And  the  gunners 
from  far  and  near  know  it,  too,  and  their 
shacks  are  hidden  around  the  white  shore  of 
the  water  that  mirrors  the  passing  moods  of 
sky  and  cloud  and  beckons  to  the  screaming 
wild  duck  in  the  clear  fall  weather. 

Even  if  you  have  heard  nothing  of  the  un- 
usual history  of  the  place,  you  cannot  help  but 
be  struck  by  the  soft-voiced  people,  none  of 
them  rich  and  few  of  them  poor,  and  the  air 
of  Sabbath  calm  that  pervades  all  times  and 
seasons.  If  you  alight  from  your  machine  or 
carriage  and  go  afoot,  —  as  visitors  to  Mash- 
pee  ought  to  go,  —  you  will  be  tempted  to 
linger  in  the  little  store,  where  one  can  ex- 
change eggs  for  cheese,  potatoes  for  meal,  and 
turnips  for  thread.  And  where,  if  one  has  not 
eggs  or  potatoes  or  turnips,  one  may  get  credit. 
You  will  glance  at  the  cheerful  graveyard  bask- 
ing in  the  sun  at  the  juncture  of  the  cross- 
roads, and  see,  among  the  half-obliterated 
mounds,  —  all  lying  ranged   from   north   to 


230      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

south,  —  a  grave  which  measures  ten  feet  long 
from  headstone  to  footstone:  a  mute  reminder 
that  the  ancient  one  was  a  mighty  man  in  his 
generation.  There  are  no  eight-footers  above 
ground  nowadays.  If  you  have  time  you  will 
let  yourself  be  lured  down  some  of  the  bypaths, 
overgrown  with  trailing  arbutus  in  the  spring, 
and  heavy  with  wild  roses  and  laurel  in  the 
early  summer;  paths  that  lead  to  cabins  where 
solitary  Indians  live,  and  others  that  lead  to 
the  low  wooded  hills,  whence  cometh  their 
help  —  and  their  firewood.  Perhaps  after  you 
have  strolled  about  the  village  for  a  while, 
or  come  back  again,  —  once  or  twice  or  many 
times,  —  you  may  grow  curious  as  to  its  ori- 
gin and  unique  history,  as  instinct  with  pathos 
and  inspiration  as  that  of  many  a  more  pre- 
tentious spot.  And  then,  perhaps,  you  will 
try  and  find  out  for  yourself  some  of  the  facts 
I  have  here  set  down. 

It  was  in  1650  that  the  Commonwealth  of 
Massachusetts,  uncomfortably  conscious  of  its 
obligations  to  the  native  inhabitants  of  Mash- 
pee,  who  were  being  steadily  crowded  out  of 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        231 

their  happy  hunting  grounds,  set  aside  then 
geveral  thousand  acres  of  land  for  their  use, 
on  condition  that  "no  Indian  should  sell  or 
white  man  buy  of  an  Indian,  any  land  with- 
out a  license  first  obtained  from  the  General 
Court."  At  this  time  the  Indians  were  also 
made  wards  of  the  State.  While  the  material 
advantages  of  this  arrangement  were  so  great 
that  Mashpee  became  a  popular  asylum  for 
red  men  from  all  over  New  England,  —  for 
the  hills  were  wooded  and  full  of  game,  the 
many  ponds,  lakes,  and  rivers  yielded  an 
abundance  of  fish,  and  the  natural  formation 
of  the  land  made  it,  as  the  old  record  explains, 
"a  most  favorable  place  for  gaining  a  liveli- 
hood without  labor,"  —  yet  there  was  a  fly  in 
the  ointment. 

The  sense  of  guardianship  galled  a  people 
unconquerably  independent.  Defiance  of  it, 
acquiescence  to  it,  complaints,  revolts,  fol- 
lowed each  other  in  perpetual  sequence.  The 
Mashpee  tribe  gained  the  management  of  its 
own  affairs  in  1693;  held  it  for  three  years;  lost 
it;  were  incorporated  into  a  district  in  1763, 


232      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

and  the  act  was  repealed  in  1788.  When,  in 
1870,  the  plantation  was  finally  incorporated 
into  a  town,  there  was  not  a  single  pure-blooded 
Indian  left  to  enjoy  the  privilege.  Of  course, 
all  these  upheavals  were  accompanied  by  bit- 
ter controversy.  The  records  reveal  quite  un- 
mistakably how  this  little  settlement  of  In- 
dians, with  their  imperviousness  to  the  white 
man's  point  of  view,  was  a  thorn  in  the  side  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers.  Just  how  the  Indians 
regarded  the  pale-faced  intruders  who  wrested 
the  whole  tract  of  countryside  away  from  them 
and  doled  out  some  thousand  acres,  need  only 
be  surmised.  Mashpee  represented  an  Indian 
problem  in  miniature,  and  Indian  problems  are 
too  well  and  too  sadly  known  to  need  further 
exposition.  However,  the  little  settlement  did, 
at  last,  attain  its  existence  as  a  town,  and  in  due 
time  sent  its  representative  to  the  Legislature. 
But  the  many  marks,  some  of  them  naively 
touching,  of  the  plantation  era,  still  remain. 
You  may  notice,  for  instance,  how  frequently 
persons  in  Mashpee  still  own  precisely  sixty 
acres  of  land  —  exactly  the  number  that  was 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        233 

originally  apportioned  off  to  each  male  adult. 
Many  more  now,  alas,  now  that  they  are  at 
liberty  to  sell  and  buy,  are  dispossessed  of 
their  ancestral  heritage. 

But  if  the  civil  history  of  Mashpee  has  been 
somewhat  marred  by  discontent,  the  ecclesias- 
tical history  is  both  cheerful  and  uncommon. 
From  1630,  when  good  Mr.  Jonathan  Bourne 
turned  his  attention  toward  evangelizing  the 
Indians,  there  has  been  an  unbroken  line  of 
preachers,  whose  salary  is  provided  for  in  true 
story-book  fashion.  It  happened  in  this  way. 
In  1790  Dr.  Samuel  Williams,  an  English  gen- 
tleman of  piety  and  learning,  died,  leaving 
his  estates  in  England  to  Harvard  College, 
on  "condition  that  sixty  pounds  per  annum  be 
allowed  to  two  persons,  well  qualified  as  to 
prudence  and  piety,  to  be  nominated  by  trus- 
tees of  the  estate,  to  preach  as  itinerants,  in 
the  English  plantations,  for  the  good  of  what 
pagans  and  blacks  may  be  neglected  there." 
The  will  goes  on  at  some  length  to  state  that 
"if  the  College  at  Cambridge  be  hindered  in 
its  encouragement  of  this  blessed  work  of  con- 


234      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

verting  the  poor  Indians,  then  the  estates,  to- 
gether with  all  the  accruing  profits  and  ad- 
vantages, shall  go  to  the  City  of  Boston." 

The  "College  in  Cambridge"  seems  not  to 
have  been  "hindered  in  its  encouragement" 
or  despoiled  of  its  trust.  And  to  this  day  it 
continues  to  send  to  Mashpee,  four  times  a 
year,  that  part  of  the  money  due  it,  which  sum 
is  directly  applied  to  the  minister's  salary. 
There  appears  never  to  have  been  any  ques- 
tion but  that  the  fund  left  for  the  conversion 
of  the  neglected  pagans  of  New  England  be- 
longs to  this  parish!  Thus  it  was  that  in  1790 
Mashpee  had  the  only  organized  Indian  church 
in  the  Commonwealth,  and  has,  for  over  a 
hundred  years,  boasted  an  endowed  church. 
However,  it  was  the  custom  of  their  white 
guardians  to  appoint  the  missionary  for  the 
church  without  consulting  the  wishes  of  the 
members.  Sometimes  he  was  to  their  liking 
and  the  edification  of  their  souls,  and  then  all 
went  well.  Sometimes  he  was  not;  and  the 
church  made  history  fast  and  furious.  It  was 
the  determination  of   the  Mashpee  tribe  to 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        235 

be  masters  of  their  own  spiritual  affairs  that 
finally  resulted  in  their  freedom  from  all  State 
control. 

Although  it  is  impossible  to  catch  the  at- 
mosphere of  a  bygone  age  from  dry  data, 
nevertheless,  the  mere  names  of  some  of  the 
preachers  who  fervently  exhorted  "the  neg- 
lected pagans"  of  this  settlement,  reconstruct 
for  us  a  glimpse  of  a  picturesque  procession. 
First  there  was  Mr.  Bourne,  who,  assisted  by 
the  famous  John  Eliot,  organized  the  church. 
Then  came  Simon  Popmonet,  an  Indian,  who 
died  after  a  ministry  of  forty  years,  leaving, 
as  the  old  record  puts  it,  "  several  children,  who 
all  lived  to  a  great  age,  and  some  of  them  are 
very  respectable  for  Indians."  Then  came  the 
Reverend  Joseph  Bourne,  grandson  of  the 
first.  And  then  Solomon  Briant,  an  Indian, 
preaching  always  in  the  Indian  tongue.  Do 
not  these  names,  with  the  brief  note  we  have 
of  them,  impart,  even  to  this  day,  an  aroma  of 
the  past? 

Unusual  as  Mashpee  has  been  in  its  civil 
and  ecclesiastical  development,  it  boasts  still 


236   CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

another  difference.  The  racial  mixture  here 
has  produced  striking  results.  First  of  all,  of 
course,  there  were  the  Indians,  living  in  wig- 
wams made  of  sedge,  hunting,  fishing,  and 
weaving  their  own  clothes.  They  have  left  a 
special  stamp  upon  the  lineaments  and  car- 
riage of  their  descendants:  a  brave  erectness; 
a  dignity  and  a  reserve.  Although  the  last 
member  of  the  community  who  could  speak 
the  Indian  tongue  died  twenty-five  years  ago, 
and  the  last  pure-blooded  one  in  1793,  yet  one 
can  easily  recognize  in  the  deeply  furrowed 
faces,  the  aquiline  noses,  and  the  straight 
black  hair,  remnants  of  that  poignant  strain. 
In  1771  there  were  fourteen  negroes  in  the 
town  of  Mashpee  and  forty  or  fifty  Indians. 
Twenty-one  years  later  there  was  not  a  sin- 
gle pure-blooded  Indian  left.  It  was  this 
infusion  that  brought  the  musical  mellow 
voices,  —  it  is  a  revelation  to  hear  a  Mash- 
pee congregation  sing,  —  the  laughter  and 
the  dancing  feet.  However,  the  alloying  of 
the  Indian  type  is  not  wholly  due  to  negro 
affiliations.    Some  of  the  Hessians  who  were 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        237 

captured  in  the  Revolution  were  sent  to 
Mashpee  to  oversee  the  salt-works.  These 
intermarried,  leaving  as  their  most  permanent 
contribution  a  few  names  such  as  Hirsch,  De 
Grasse,  etc.  Of  later  years  the  Portuguese  have 
drifted  in,  turning  the  sandy  fields  into  quite 
miraculous  strawberry  farms,  and  bringing, 
too,  certain  quaint  and  vivid  touches  of  color 
and  custom  from  their  home  at  Cape  Verde. 
But  in  spite  of  its  heterogeneous  ancestry,  the 
Mashpee  folk  still  prefer  to  call  themselves 
Indians.  The  names  of  Attiquin,  Amos, 
Coombs,  Pocknet,  and  half  a  dozen  others 
which  frequently  recur  on  the  old  records,  are 
still  jealously  preserved  and  handed  down  with 
pride.  And  tradition,  like  that  of  **  Indian's 
Tavern,"  is  kept  green  by  faithful  observance. 
But  even  if  one  should  tell  the  complete  his- 
tory of  Mashpee,  only  one  half  would  then  be 
told.  For  the  other  half  is  intangible,  made  up 
of  balmy  air,  brooding  sky,  and  blessed  sense 
of  peace.  And  why  should  there  not  be  peace, 
when  every  man  is  as  one  with  nothing  to  make 
him  afraid?  The  summer  is  long  and  the  win- 


238      CAPE  COD  NEW  AND  OLD 

ter  is  kind.  The  minister's  salary  is  oflE  their 
minds,  and  the  soil  is  perfect  for  the  scratch- 
ing hen.  The  hills  hide  many  rich  cranberry 
bogs,  where  men,  women,  and  children  may 
earn  full  wages  in  the  fine  fall  weather,  if  they 
are  so  inclined. 

No  one  hurries:  indeed,  how  could  one? 
There  is  no  bustling  square;  no  crowded  mar- 
ket-place; no  rival  church  with  clanging  bells 
to  split  the  wide  tranquillity;  no  flying  to 
catch  the  train,  for  there  is  no  train,  soiling 
the  blue  with  a  smoky  pennant.  It  was  only  a 
season  or  two  ago  that  we  saw  a  barefooted 
girl,  with  blowing  hair  and  smiling  face,  drive 
an  ancient  horse,  attached  to  a  still  more 
ancient  wagon,  into  a  wide  stream,  and  then 
proceed  to  dip  a  bucket,  fastened  to  a  pole, 
into  the  water,  and  draw  it  up  and  turn  it  into 
a  barrel  on  the  wagon.  This  she  did  gayly  and 
gracefully,  and  no  doubt  frequently,  for  they 
had  no  well,  and  always  procured  their  water 
this  way  —  summer  and  winter.  Yet  there 
were  men  in  the  family,  and  plenty  of  water 
to  be  had  for  the  digging. 


A  FORGOTTEN  CORNER        239 

If  any  one  chooses  to  go  to  Mashpee  and  see 
if  these  things  are  true,  he  is  charged  to  throw 
away  ambition,  and  be  still,  and  learn  what 
Sunday  calm  means  all  the  days  of  the  week. 

But  let  him  go  soon,  for  horrid  rumors  are 
abroad.  Already  electric  lights  have  sparkled 
forth  to  shame  the  fireflies,  and  the  white  man 
has  been  seen  there  with  clanking  chains  and 
strange,  uncanny  instruments,  that  affright 
the  brown  babies  and  the  careless  birds. 
Wooded  stakes  have  sprung  up  along  the  guilt- 
less forest  roads,  and  lo !  who  knows  when  their 
mantle  of  peace  may  be  torn  to  shreds,  and 
their  rest  joined  to  our  restlessness  by  black 
iron  rails,  and  the  twisted  cable  of  progress 
and  electricity.'^ 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .   S    .   A 


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